“What are your plans?” asked Mrs. Marshall-Smith.

“Nothing very definite except the great Date.  That’s fixed for the twenty-first.”

“Oh, so soon ... less than three weeks from now!”

Morrison affected to feel a note of disapproval in her voice, and said with his faint smile, “You can hardly blame me for not wishing to delay.”

“Oh, no blame!” she denied his inference.  “After all it’s over a month since the engagement was announced, and who knows how much longer before that you and Molly knew about it.  No.  I’m not one who believes in long engagements.  The shorter the better.”

Sylvia saw an opportunity to emerge with an appearance of ease from a silence that might seem ungracious.  It was an enforced manoeuver with which the past weeks had made her wearily familiar.  “Aunt Victoria’s hitting at Arnold and Judith over your head,” she said to Morrison.  “It’s delicious, the way Tantine shows herself, for all her veneer of modernity, entirely nineteen century in her impatience of Judith’s work.  Now that there’s a chance to escape from it into the blessed haven of idle matrimony, she can’t see why Judith doesn’t give up her lifetime dream and marry Arnold tomorrow.”

Somewhat to her surprise, her attempt at playfulness had no notable success.  The intent of her remarks received from her aunt and Morrison the merest formal recognition of a hasty, dim smile, and with one accord they looked at once in another direction.  “And after the wedding?” Mrs. Marshall-Smith inquired—­“or is that a secret?”

“Oh no, when one belongs to Molly’s exalted class or is about to be elevated into it, nothing is secret.  I’m quite sure that the society editor of the Herald knows far better than I the names of the hotels in Jamaica we’re to frequent.”

“Oh!  Jamaica!  How ... how ... original!” Mrs. Marshall-Smith cast about her rather desperately for a commendatory adjective.

“Yes, quite so, isn’t it?” agreed Morrison.  “It’s Molly’s idea.  She is original, you know.  It’s one of her greatest charms.  She didn’t want to go to Europe because there is so much to see there, to do.  She said she wanted a honeymoon and not a personally conducted trip.”

They all laughed again, and Sylvia said:  “How like Molly!  How clever!  Nobody does her thinking for her!”

“The roads in Jamaica are excellent for motoring, too, I hear,” added Morrison.  “That’s another reason, of course.”

Page gave a great laugh.  “Well, as Molly’s cousin, let me warn you!  Molly driving a car in Jamaica will be like Pavlova doing a bacchante on the point of a needle!  You’ll have to keep a close watch on her to see that she doesn’t absentmindedly dash across the island and jump off the bank right on into the ocean.”

“Where does F. Morrison, house-furnishing-expert, come in?” asked Mrs. Marshall-Smith.