; otherwise she made no
response. She learned with difficulty, like a Bourbon; but many years'
experience had at last convinced her that her daughter's occasional
mocking mannerism had to be put up with. Conceivably there were people
in the world who might have liked this mild cynical way of Carlisle's,
seeing in it, not indeed a good quality, but, so to say, the seamy side
of a good quality; the lingering outpost of a good quality that had been
routed; at least the headstone over the grave of a good quality that
maybe was only buried alive. But of these people, if such there were,
Mrs. Heth was positively not one....

And Carlisle's next remark was: "What would you wear to-night, for the
occasion?... Oh, there's a big motor-boat going by like the wind."

For though she might sometimes jeer aloud over processes, the daughter
was known to be quite as serious at heart as her mother, over the great
matters of life. Otherwise, look you, she might not have been at the
Beach at all to-day. The fact was that she and mamma had not
_positively_ decided on this recuperative excursion (though they had
_practically_ decided) until after the arrival of Cousin Willie Kerr's
notelet at breakfast: in which notelet Willie mentioned laconically that
he and Mr. Canning were themselves going Beachward by the three o'clock
train, and concluded his few lines with _verbum sap_, which is a Latin
quotation.

Standing idly at the window, the girl had indeed been thinking of Mr.
Canning before her mother spoke; and thinking with most pleasurable
speculations. Truly he was worth a thought, was Mr. Canning, proud
stranger within the gates--"house-guest," as the society column prefers
it--for whom, if reports were true, many ladies fair had sighed,
sickened, and died. And she, alone in her maidenly coterie, had already
met the too exclusive metropolitan--four days ago, by the lucky fluke of
turning in at the Country Club at an out-of-the-way morning moment, when
she might have motored straight on home, and had been within an ace of
doing so. An omen, wasn't it? Five minutes she and Mr. Canning had
talked, over so-called horses' necks provided by his sedate host, and
before the end of that time she had perceived an interest dawning in the
young man's somewhat ironic eyes. With the usual of his sex one could
have counted pretty definitely on the thing's being followed up.
However, Mr. Canning, the difficult, had merely saluted her
fascinatingly, an