d I almost
laughed again; but that angel of a Phil looked quite sympathetic.

In a few minutes we settled down more comfortably, with Phil and me on a
sofa together, and Cousin Robert on a chair, which kept me in fits of
anxiety by creaking and looking too small to hold him.

Phil and I held hands, as girls generally do when they are at all
self-conscious, if they sit within a yard of each other; and we all
began to talk in the absurd way of new-found relations, or people you
haven't seen for a long time.

We asked Robert things, and he answered; and when we'd encouraged him a
good deal, he asked us things too, looking mostly at Phyllis. At last we
arrived at the information that he had a mother and two sisters, who
spent the summers at Scheveningen, in a villa. Then fell a silence,
which Phil tactfully broke by saying that she had heard of Scheveningen.
It must be a beautiful place, and she'd been brought up with a cup that
came from there. When she was good, as a child, she was allowed to play
with it.

"I should think you were always good," said Cousin Robert. Phyllis
blushed, and then he blushed too, under his brown skin. "I have also a
fiancee at Scheveningen," he went on, a propos of nothing--unless of the
blush.

"Is she a Dutch girl?" I asked.

"Oh yes."

"I suppose she is very pretty and charming?"

"I do not know. I am used to her. We have played together when we were
young. I go every Saturday to Scheveningen, when they are there, to stay
till Monday."

"Oh!" said Phil.

"Oh!" said I.

Silence again. Then, "It was very good of you to come and see us so
quickly after I wrote."

"It was my duty; and my pleasure too" (as second thought). "You must
tell me your plans."

So we told them, and Cousin Robert did not approve. "I do not think it
will do," said he, firmly.

"I'm afraid it must do," I returned, with equal firmness disguised under
a smile.

Phil apologized for me as she gave me a squeeze of the hand.

"We've been very happy together, Nell and I," she explained, "but we
have never had much excitement. This is our first chance, and--we shall
be _well_ chaperoned by Lady MacNairne."

"Yes; but she is the aunt of the stranger young man."

"Geniuses are never strangers. He is a genius," I said. "You've no idea
how his Salon picture was praised."

"But his character. What do you know of that?"

"It's his aunt's character that matters most, and the MacNairnes are
irreproachable."