I approached him on the one subject I could think of which was more personal than his usefulness to Cressida, and asked him whether he still suffered from facial neuralgia as much as he had done in former years, and whether he was therefore dreading London, where the climate used to be so bad for him.

“And is still,” he caught me up, “And is still!  For me to go to London is martyrdom, chere Madame.  In New York it is bad enough, but in London it is the auto da fe, nothing less.  My nervous system is exotic in any country washed by the Atlantic ocean, and it shivers like a little hairless dog from Mexico.  It never relaxes.  I think I have told you about my favourite city in the middle of Asia, la sainte Asie, where the rainfall is absolutely nil, and you are protected on every side by hundreds of metres of warm, dry sand.  I was there when I was a child once, and it is still my intention to retire there when I have finished with all this.  I would be there now, n-ow-ow,” his voice rose querulously, “if Madame Cressida did not imagine that she needs me,—­and her fancies, you know,” he flourished his hands, “one gives in to them.  In humouring her caprices you and I have already played some together.”

We were approaching Cressida’s deck chairs, ranged under the open windows of her stateroom.  She was already recumbent, swathed in lavender scarfs and wearing purple orchids—­doubtless from Jerome Brown.  At her left, Horace had settled down to a French novel, and Julia Garnet, at her right, was complainingly regarding the grey horizon.  On seeing me, Cressida struggled under her fur-lined robes and got to her feet,—­which was more than Horace or Miss Julia managed to do.  Miss Julia, as I could have foretold, was not pleased.  All the Garnets had an awkward manner with me.  Whether it was that I reminded them of things they wished to forget, or whether they thought I esteemed Cressida too highly and the rest of them too lightly, I do not know; but my appearance upon their scene always put them greatly on their dignity.  After Horace had offered me his chair and Miss Julia had said doubtfully that she thought I was looking rather better than when she last saw me, Cressida took my arm and walked me off toward the stern.

“Do you know, Carrie, I half wondered whether I shouldn’t find you here, or in London, because you always turn up at critical moments in my life.”  She pressed my arm confidentially, and I felt that she was once more wrought up to a new purpose.  I told her that I had heard some rumour of her engagement.

“It’s quite true, and it’s all that it should be,” she reassured me.  “I’ll tell you about it later, and you’ll see that it’s a real solution.  They are against me, of course,—­all except Horace.  He has been such a comfort.”

Horace’s support, such as it was, could always be had in exchange for his mother’s signature, I suspected.  The pale May day had turned bleak and chilly, and we sat down by an open hatchway which emitted warm air from somewhere below.  At this close range I studied Cressida’s face, and felt reassured of her unabated vitality; the old force of will was still there, and with it her characteristic optimism, the old hope of a “solution.”