She slept until late in the day, Mrs. Edis having given orders that she should not be disturbed. Otherwise the routine of Great House was not altered. Fanny took her daily ride over the estate. Mrs. Edis sat in her chair in the living-room, making a feint of sewing, in reality listening for Julia’s footfalls. So she had sat listening for sixteen years.

But it was a lagging, almost elderly step that she finally heard approaching along the terrace at the back of the house. A moment later Mrs. Winstone entered, flushed, damp, but with her eyes full of malicious amusement.

“Really, Jane,” she drawled, “the tropics were never made for walkin’. I believe I’ll keep my new waist line?—”

“Not a bad idea to keep what little Nature is still willing to give you.” Mrs. Edis’s voice was as sarcastic as her eyes. “I hope there was no bad news in your note?”

“Note?” Mrs. Winstone turned her back and began to rearrange the flowers on the bookcase.

“Do you fancy the least event could happen in this house without my knowledge?”

“Really, it was so unimportant I had forgotten it. Merely an invitation to Bath House. That reminds me—” She adopted her airiest tones. “Have I spoken to you of Mrs. Morison? Charmin’ little woman stoppin’ at Bath House. I met her drivin’ just now, and impulsively asked her to come to tea to-day, and bring the others. How naughty of me. I should have consulted you first.”

“Your friends are welcome to tea. I am not a pauper.”

“But such a hermit! It is too kind of you to take me in. I don’t fancy botherin’ you with my friends.”

“How is it you were not carried away by impulse before?”

“I came to Nevis to see you and to rest. I see enough of Hannah and Pirie in London. But now that Mrs. Morison has come to Bath House, and her brother, Daniel Tay?—”

Mrs. Edis lifted her head as if she scented powder. “A man? Is he married?”

Mrs. Winstone smiled significantly. “Oh, dear me, no!”

“How old is he?”

“About thirty.”

“I’ll have no young man in this house.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t look at Fanny. Hates girls. He’s a very dear, a very particular friend of mine.”

Mrs. Edis laid her work on the table, dropped her spectacles to the end of her nose, and surveyed the smart figure with the developing waist line. “And what are you doing with very dear and particular friends of that sex at your time of life?”

“Dear Jane!” said Mrs. Winstone, with asperity, and transferring her attention to the early Victorian tidies. “Please remember that if you live out of the world I live in it. Oh, la! la! Come over to London and see the procession of hansoms in Bond Street containin’ smart gray-haired women and nice boys. The gray hairs are generally payin’ for the hansoms, and more. I never had a gray hair, and my rich American friend always pays for the hansoms, and more. Why shouldn’t I have a youngish beau if I can get one? But really, I didn’t think he’d follow me here!”

“Disgusting!” announced Mrs. Edis, who looked as if she had just entered a room in the Paris salon devoted to the nude. “In my time?—”

“Ah, dear Jane, that time is forever gone. You couldn’t get a bonnet in all Bond Street to suit your years. Hannah Macmanus, who poses as an old woman, has to have hers made at a little shop in Bloomsbury.”

“I can well believe it! I could see what London was coming to sixty years ago. Enamelled old women?—”

“Oh, la! la! Prehistoric! Filthy habit! To-day we keep our skins clean.”

“Do sit down. You are flouncing about like a sylph of twenty. I hope you have not permitted yourself to become seriously interested in this young man.”

Mrs. Winstone dropped into a chair on the other side of the table and looked across the work-basket with airy self-consciousness.

“Why not?”

“You are an old fool, and he must be a young one.”

“Not a bit of it. Level-headed business man. Rich and strenuous.”

“Strenuous?”

“New word. American. Means a short life for yourself and a merry one for your heirs.”

“Be good enough to confine yourself to English. Are you going to marry this youth and make a laughing-stock of yourself and your family?”

“Marry? Oh, how tiresome of you to be so serious. I’d managed him so well! I never thought he would follow me here when I need a rest. But he’s romantic?—”

“Romantic? He must be if he’s in love with you. Really, Maria, I never even look at you that I don’t feel like giving thanks I have been permitted to spend my life on Nevis.”

Mrs. Winstone fetched a little sigh. “But you don’t mind my askin’ these people to tea?”

“It is a long time since a stranger has crossed my threshold. Still, they are welcome. This is your birthplace as well as mine.”

“How sweet of you! I’ll go and smarten up a bit.” As she was leaving the room she turned, knit her brows, and said hesitatingly, “Better not tell Julia they’re comin’. She left London because she was sick of people, and has really come for a rest. She might run away, and Mrs. Morison is dyin’ to meet her. Americans are quite mad about celebrities.”

“Oh, very well,” said Mrs. Edis, impatiently.

She sewed for half an hour longer. Suddenly her eyes flashed and she lifted her head. But when Julia came in she said formally:?—

“Good morning. Do you always sleep until noon?”

“Rather not! But I didn’t go to sleep till nearly dawn, I was so excited. I shall get up every morning at five and take that old walk round the cone. How often I have thought of it.”

“You have been long com............