it; I cannot tell you why—­perhaps it was contagious in the local air—­but a veritable madness of craving to know about it seized upon me.  Of course, I saw that Miss Rieppe was, almost too grossly and obviously, “playing for time”; the health of people’s fathers did not cause weekly extensions of this sort.  But what was it that the young lady expected time to effect for her?  Her release, formally, by her young man, on the ground of his worldly ill fortune?  Or was it for an offer from the owner of the Hermana that she was waiting, before she should take the step of formally releasing John Mayrant?  No, neither of these conjectures seemed to furnish a key to the tactics of Miss Rieppe and the theory that each of these affianced parties was strategizing to cause the other to assume the odium of breaking their engagement, with no result save that of repeatedly countermanding a wedding-cake, struck me as belonging admirably to a stage-comedy in three acts, but scarcely to life as we find it.  Besides, poor John Mayrant was, all too plainly, not strategizing; he was playing as straight a game as the honest heart of a gentleman could inspire.  And so, baffled at all points, I said (for I simply had to try something which might lead to my sharing in Kings Port’s vibrating secret):—­

“I can’t make out whether she wants to marry him or not.”

Mrs. Gregory answered.  “That is just what she is coming to see for herself.”

“But since her love was for his phosphates only—!” was my natural exclamation.

It caused (and this time I did not expect it) my inveterate ladies to consult each other’s expressions.  They prolonged their silence so much that I spoke again:—­

“And backing out of this sort of thing can be done, I should think, quite as cleverly, and much more simply, from a distance.”

It was Mrs. Weguelin who answered now, or, rather, who headed me off.  “Have you been able to make out whether he wants to marry her or not?”

“Oh, he never comes near any of that with me!”

“Certainly not.  But we all understand that he has taken a fancy to you, and that you have talked much with him.”

So they all understood this, did they?  This, too, had played its little special part in the buzz?  Very well, then, nothing of my private impressions should drop from my lips here, to be quoted and misquoted and battledored and shuttlecocked, until it reached the boy himself (as it would inevitably) in fantastic disarrangement.  I laughed.  “Oh, yes!  I have talked much with him.  Shakespeare, I think, was our latest subject.”

Mrs. Weguelin was plainly watching for something to drop.  “Shakespeare!” Her tone was of surprise.

I then indulged myself in that most delightful sort of impertinence, which consists in the other person’s not seeing it.  “You wouldn’t be likely to have heard of that yet.  It occurred only before dinner to-day.  But we have also talked optimism, pessimism, sociology, evolution—­Mr. Mayrant would soon become quite—­” I stopped myself on the edge of something very clumsy.