“ Posey, in severely plain white voile, with a picture hat and white feathers framing the waves of her splendid hair, thanked her stars that she had had Helen Carstairs' example in dress long enough to profit by it for this occasion. She saw in half a glance that her frock, the result of the best skill of the dressmaker at Alison's Cross Roads, who called her by name in fitting her, could not vie with the dove-colored confection with its all-over embroideries that sat so easily upon Helen's erect form. ”

“ There is really no better medium than mid-Atlantic air for the growth of the tender passion. The leisure of a good voyage is like the forty years of Europe compared with the cycle of Cathay."
"It seems to me that you are exculpatory."
"I wish to heaven I might be!" exclaimed Clandonald, smothering his very genuine regret with a forkful of the roast beef of old England pastured upon Western plains.
The talk that morning with Posey Winstanley had awakened in him certain emotions of a simple elementary sort that, in spite of him, still twanged upon his heart-strings, pleasingly. ”

“ To get rid of her, she had paid a persistent child a franc for a big bunch of violets, and the girl, with a saucy, merry face, thrust into her hand also a spray of orange blossom. Helen threw this last away impatiently. Impossible to be rid of the suggestions of that wedding, ten-fold more abhorrent to her now that she had seen for herself and knew beyond a peradventure that it was inspired by no such love as she and John had felt for each other only a day or two before; such love as she must feel for him, God help her, till she died. ”

“ The weird, self-pitying note of the parrot in a cabin hard by seemed to grow fainter and more dreamlike. Turning wearily upon her pillows, she let sleep take her into its merciful embrace.
"Certainly, Mariol, you have found your American types ready to hand upon this voyage," Lord Clandonald was saying, as the two men walked up and down with their cigars upon the deck decried by Miss Carstairs' chaperon. "The most obvious one is, of course, the astonishing young person who aroused us from the spiritual lethargy of a first meal at sea, when one is always on guard not to be too accessible." ”

“ Masked in her brown veil, Helen sat in her corner, turning this bitter morsel upon her tongue, her eyes vaguely resting upon the passing show of passengers as they came straying up on deck to make the best of a fine afternoon while getting out to sea. Impatiently casting aside her unwelcome thoughts, she tried to interest herself in these people, to speculate upon their identity, purpose, and personality, with the usual rather poor returns, since a ship's company assembled at first view has always the most depressing influence upon the looker-on. ”

“ Miss Bleecker looked away. By and by, hope springing eternal, whispered to her that what a rich old man wants in a wife is not youth and beauty, provoking the eternal triangle of the modern situation, but agreeability, tact, a knowledge of how to make the wheels go round. She rallied, smiled at Mr. Glynn in the manner of a sweet old-time friend and counsellor, then taking out a French novel and a pearl-handled paper-cutter, subsided into apparent literature and actual plan-making.
Helen wondered if ever girl in her position were more curiously hounded by odd circumstance. ”

“ While the spinster, now avenged, snored peacefully through the tumult of elements outside, Posey lay wide-eyed, trembling, imagining all horrors of the sea, and praying for the comfort of Mrs. Gasher's friendly voice.
"If we are to be lost," passed through her mind, despairingly, "everything will be forgotten that has been said of me, and it is better so." She longed to go to her father, but dared not, considering his distance from her, and the unpleasant fact that he shared a stateroom with two other men. The silence of the ship seemed as unnatural as the failure of increase in its motion. ”

“ When Clandonald and herself finally left the train at Cannes, and Mariol went on his way Paris-wards, Helen breathed a genuine sigh of regret for a void not to be filled.
The welcome she received from the Winstanleys went far toward reconciling Miss Carstairs to the necessity for a continuance of interest in human existence. Those warm and simple-hearted people, refusing to allow her to stop at an hotel alone with her maid, opened their home to her with rejoicing hospitality. ”

“ Say, John, to please me that you are longing to meet Helen!"
"Posey," began Glynn, and his voice to his own ears sounded unnaturally thin, "I have been waiting a chance to tell you that I have known Miss Carstairs; that I ran upon her by chance at the Gare de Lyons yesterday, just as the train for the South had started. That we were, in fact, companions in the same compartment, and talked of you together, more than once, during our day's run."
"You! Helen! Wonders will never cease!" cried the girl exultingly. ”

“ Carstairs had had the yacht meet Helen and himself at Gibraltar, and cruised all that winter in the Mediterranean.
That had been life abroad, Helen thought, with a throb of yearning! She was very fond of her father, rather a stony image to most people, and immensely proud of the way people looked up to his achievements in the Street, the resistless rush of his business combinations, his massive wealth, and his perfect imperturbability to newspaper cavil and attacks by enemies. ”

“ But there is no other woman I can talk to, and that look you gave me seemed to open every door within me!"
"I will help you if I can," Helen breathed, rather than spoke. Her spirit, wrestling with the certainty that crushed it, was yet ready to rise to generosity. Was it not what she had bid John Glynn do in the moment of his acutest suffering? Find a younger, fresher, more trustful life-partner than herself, and put swiftly out of mind their disastrous venture together that could not end in happiness! ”

“ Mariol, after attending unsuccessfully to the business entrusted to him by Clandonald, encountered Miss Carstairs, her chaperon and maid, on deck awaiting the summons to go ashore. He stood by them, commenting with amusement upon the sudden disintegration of the ardent intimacies of the voyage. To judge from appearances, the chief aim of the passengers was now to rid themselves of one another as promptly as possible. People who had sworn fidelity over night were offish, mysterious, absorbed in petty anxieties about customs, telegrams, trains and tips. ”

“ So long the enchanted ground behind the rose-wall had seemed an annex to her own modest property, she begrudged the idea of its overflowing with noisy gay people, with their dinners and dances, their motor cars puffing up the drive, their tennis matches and tea-parties, piano-practising and perhaps spoiled children and dogs, to invade her sylvan solitudes.
The one fate that Lady Campstown kept in reserve as the most painful that could possibly overtake Villa Reine des Fées, was for it to be inhabited by Americans. ”

“ It was like one of their old talks at the house of Helen's friend who had introduced them to each other, and fostered their intimacy; a woman who had the cleverness to find interesting people in the whirlpool of business and pleasure and money-spending that calls itself New York society, and the courage to draw them out of it to herself. ”

“ But seriously, Clandonald, and at any risk, I must tell you that you need rousing. That past of yours, unsavory as it was through no fault of yours, has been long enough decently interred for you to forget it, and to recreate your life's happiness. One can't be sore always, any more than we can love always, or mourn always. And you, of all men the one best fitted to wear the yoke of your staid British virtues, to serve your country and your king at home, to be a model landlord, a husband and a paterfamilias, comme il y en a peu! ”

“ Talk about 'seeing New York City'! It's not a patch on this ship for making a man feel his lower limbs, if you'll excuse the expression before a lady. Why, she's a wonder, ma'am, a marvel, and there's literally no end to her. I find myself saying at intervals, 'Thank God, I've lived to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and what's more, to cross it in a floating Waldorf-Astoria,' for so it looks to me!"
"You are fond of the water, then?" said Helen, surprised at her own affability, but on the whole too wretched to care for risks. ”

“ In real life, under strong emotion, things are said brokenly that often have neither grammar, rhyme nor reason. This man certainly never meant to make love to this girl out of a clear sky. But his voice, his face, his manner, were all those of a lover such as Posey had not known in her brief experience. And the worst of it was, the same unaccountable, unbidden feeling of delight again rushed over her that she had felt for him upon the ship. ”

“ Kipling told me once," said Clandonald, following a laugh at Mariol's expense, "that when a gushing American girl asked how she could endure the brilliancy of a certain chat between her husband and Cecil Rhodes on the Kiplings' veranda in South Africa, she had been puzzled what to answer, because, as a matter of fact, each of these gentlemen had been trying to talk more delightful drivel than the other. What good luck for the rest of us, that great minds do unbend in the intimacy of private discourse!" ”

“ But just to look at you as you stand, to-day, I should judge there were the makings of a fair business man in you. Look here, Lord Clandonald, I don't know that I was ever better pleased in my life than by that idea of yours of our going to lunch at Beaumanoir with Miss Carstairs. I don't mind telling you I just adore that girl—and the combination of her company with a moat and yew trees, and wall-peaches, and the chance of seeing English rooks—and Miss Bleecker not 'in it,' I'll be eternally obliged. ”

“ It was not the best atmosphere for a man in his state of mind to find himself in daily intercourse with his impulsive old aunt, whose life had been for weeks and months saturated with the influence of Posey's personality. Although Lady Campstown honestly believed herself to be doing everything that feminine tact and zeal could inspire to extol to him the desirability of Helen Carstairs as a wife, she was really setting forth Posey's charm from morning until night. ”

“ One would be voted a superannuated nuisance."
"I have always thought it the best compliment a man can pay a woman," said Miss Carstairs, blushing a little, "when he talks to her, in earnest, about what dominates his thoughts."
Mariol flashed an appreciative glance at her. Clandonald cried out:
"Heaven defend your sex, my dear lady, if they had to sit still and listen to most men's governing thoughts. And, on the whole, there is nothing so wearing as a person with ideas that have never been applied. To-day, we must think and act, and accomplish or fail, before we talk. ”

“ At some distance from the house this terrace was rounded into a lookout, commanding a wondrous avenue of palms, their trunks enwrapped in roses and jasmine, at the end of which the hillside fell sharply away, revealing an unimaginably lovely view of the sea and islands. From here, as the visitor now seated herself to gaze her last at a favorite prospect, she saw coming toward her, beneath the arch of palms, between borders of violets, a very tall young woman, modishly attired in white embroidered cloth, with a large white-plumed hat that breathed of the Rue de la Paix, in Paris. ”

“ Although her ladyship's secret heart yearned over Posey, and she would have given worlds to see Clan's allegiance transferred to her, the American rival well disposed of in some other way (nature not settled in her mind) and Posey becoming a member of their family, her very own to cherish through life, the joyous regenerator of her nephew's hopes and fortunes—she now felt this to be a fairy tale beyond chance of reality. ”

“ At a comparatively early hour, the usual spaces where passengers assemble were deserted, most people giving up the pretence of being exhilarated by near approach to the British Isles. The dining-saloon displayed still a few groups sitting around the tables sipping from glasses, reading or talking; the smoking-room alone retained its usual features of cards and conviviality.
Here, toward ten o'clock, Clandonald, looking more than commonly bored, arose from a game in which he had not acquitted himself with brilliancy, and strolled outside, alone. ”

“ It is perfect audacity for any one person, whether clever or insignificant, to attempt to monopolize attention. Everybody else is invariably bored by it, where they are not laughing in their sleeves."
"Have you seen many persons laughing in their sleeves, Miss Bleecker?" asked Posey Winstanley, innocently. "Did they do it when you were young? I always wondered how. Mr. Vane, please stop eating long enough, to let's try laughing in our sleeves at Miss Bleecker. ”

“ How you could stand his babbling in your ear, I can't imagine. But she! she! The worst specimen of the travelling American who makes one blush for one's country when abroad."
"One must own to her good looks," Helen interpolated bravely.
Miss Bleecker snorted.
"My dear, that is unworthy of you. A Twenty-third Street shop-girl would be ashamed to do her hair like that; and her frock—bought in stock, and fitted in half a day, probably. But even that doesn't count beside her phenomenal assurance and self-conceit. Fancy now, her addressing a remark to me, before I had spoken to her. ”

“ You aren't happy, you have no ambition, no purpose, no zest in living. Get yourself a wife."
"This from Mariol, the scoffer, the celibate! My dear fellow, I forgive you your trespass upon forbidden ground, because I know you are sincere. But you forget one small, important fact. The person who bore my name, and her various works of evil, have so depleted my finances that, had I the courage, I haven't the wherewithal to hawk my wares in the marriage mart. I wonder if you know what it costs to keep a Lady Clandonald in the enjoyment of the domestic atmosphere of which you speak. ”

“ She chilled on you because of me, poor dear; for any nice girl in her senses must see you're a heavenly angel, if you do wear rusty tweeds. She thought I was crude and aggressive and cheap, and so I am, maybe, but I don't mean to stay so; and if ever I get to be anything better, it'll be Helen Carstairs that's started me. But she won't know it, and won't know me, and that's really what's bothering me so dreadfully, daddy. ”

“ It is so much nicer always to be with the few one loves than with the many one merely has to know."
"You have been gleaning golden opinions, all the same," said Helen. "Lady Campstown has been telling me what Princess Z—— says of you as an entertainer—that you were born, not made."
"I reckon—no, I fancy I came by it honestly," laughed Posey. "I always enjoy the things we give so much more than those we go to."
"I am asking Miss Carstairs to come to me to-morrow for luncheon," said Lady Campstown, putting with loving fingers a stray bit of Posey's lace in place. ”

“ From time to time, Mariol had detected passing from her to Helen the glances of homage a very unsophisticated girl bestows upon one she has elected to make her heroine. And, despite this artless worship, Miss Carstairs did not relent in her cool demeanor. She was civil always, considerate often, but never yielding in keeping Miss Winstanley at a distance. The men at their table were unanimously beginning to feel that a girl may win easily in the chief events of such a contest, and yet be badly worsted in the end. ”

“ I want to live, to have my fling, and what's worse, I want to be loved—really, as I think it ought to be!"
Her voice dropped with her eyelashes; a burning blush ran up and overspread her face. Old Herbert Winstanley asked himself if this were, indeed, his little girl, his romp in pinafores of a year or two back? Whence had come the blooming vision of young womanhood who had supplanted the Posey of his recent lean and struggling years? ”