“Do you mean they’ve run off and got married?”

“What do you take them for?  Much more like them to run off and not get married.  But they haven’t done that either.  And, speaking of that, I believe I’ve gone a bit adrift.  Your fire-eater, you know—­she is an extraordinary woman!” And Beverly gave his mellow, little humorous chuckle.  “Hanged if I don’t begin to think she does fancy him.”

“Well!” I cried, “that would explain—­no, it wouldn’t.  Whence comes your theory?”

“Saw her look at him at dinner once last night.  We dined with some people—­Cornerly.  She looked at him just once.  Well, if she intends—­by gad, it upsets one’s whole notion of her!”

“Isn’t just one look rather slight basis for—­”

“Now, old man, you know better than that!” Beverly paused to chuckle.  “My grandmother Livingston,” he resumed, “knew Aaron Burr, and she used to say that he had an eye which no honest woman could meet without a blush.  I don’t know whether your fire-eater is a Launcelot, or a Galahad, but that girl’s eye at dinner—­”

“Did he blush?” I laughed.

“Not that I saw.  But really, old man, confound it, you know!  He’s no sort of husband for her.  How can he make her happy and how can she make him happy, and how can either of them hit it off with the other the least little bit?  She’s expensive, he’s not; she’s up-to-date, he’s not; she’s of the great world, he’s provincial.  She’s all derision, he’s all faith.  Why, hang it, old boy, what does she want him for?”

Beverly’s handsome brow was actually furrowed with his problem; and, as I certainly could furnish him no solution for it, we stood in silence on the post-office steps.  “What can she want him for?” he repeated.  Then he threw it off lightly with one of his chuckles.  “So glad I’ve no daughters to marry!  Well—­I must go draw some money.”

He took himself off with a certain alacrity, giving an impatient cut with his stick at a sparrow in the middle of Worship Street, nor did I see him again this day, although, after hurriedly getting my letters (for the starting hour of the boat had now drawn near), I followed where he had gone down Court Street, and his cosmopolitan figure would have been easy to descry at any distance along that scantily peopled pavement.  He had evidently found the bank and was getting his money.

David of the yellow heir and his limpid-looking bride were on the horrible little excursion boat, watching for me and keeping with some difficulty a chair next themselves that I might not have to stand up all the way; and, as I came aboard, the bride called out to me her relief, she had made sure that I would be late.

“David said you wouldn’t,” she announced in her clear up-country accent across the parasols and heads of huddled tourists, “but I told him a gentleman that’s late to three meals aivry day like as not would forget boats can’t be kept hot in the kitchen for you.”