ay he said, smiling, to Miss
Mavis--'Won't you come with me and see if it's pleasant?'

'Oh, well, we had better not stay all night!' her mother exclaimed, but
without moving. The girl moved, after a moment's hesitation; she rose
and accompanied Jasper into the other room. I observed that her slim
tallness showed to advantage as she walked and that she looked well as
she passed, with her head thrown back, into the darkness of the other
part of the house. There was something rather marked, rather surprising
(I scarcely knew why, for the act was simple enough) in her doing so,
and perhaps it was our sense of this that held the rest of us somewhat
stiffly silent as she remained away. I was waiting for Mrs. Mavis to go,
so that I myself might go; and Mrs. Nettlepoint was waiting for her to
go so that I might not. This doubtless made the young lady's absence
appear to us longer than it really was--it was probably very brief. Her
mother moreover, I think, had a vague consciousness of embarrassment.
Jasper Nettlepoint presently returned to the back drawing-room to get a
glass of syrup for his companion, and he took occasion to remark that it
was lovely on the balcony: one really got some air, the breeze was from
that quarter. I remembered, as he went away with his tinkling tumbler,
that from _my_ hand, a few minutes before, Miss Mavis had not been
willing to accept this innocent offering. A little later Mrs.
Nettlepoint said--'Well, if it's so pleasant there we had better go
ourselves.' So we passed to the front and in the other room met the two
young people coming in from the balcony. I wondered in the light of
subsequent events exactly how long they had been sitting there together.
(There were three or four cane chairs which had been placed there for
the summer.) If it had been but five minutes, that only made subsequent
events more curious. 'We must go, mother,' Miss Mavis immediately said;
and a moment later, with a little renewal of chatter as to our general
meeting on the ship, the visitors had taken leave. Jasper went down with
them to the door and as soon as they had gone out Mrs. Nettlepoint
exclaimed--'Ah, but she'll be a bore--she'll be a bore!'

'Not through talking too much--surely.'

'An affectation of silence is as bad. I hate that particular _pose_;
it's coming up very much now; an imitation of the English, like
everything else. A girl who tries to be statuesque at sea--that will act
on one's nerves!'

'I d