“I—­I wanted to ask you about the Leightons,” stammered Lewis.  “They used to live here.  That is—­”

“I know,” said the lady.  “Come up on the veranda.”

That veranda made Consolation Cottage seem farther away than ever to Lewis.  Its floor was tiled.  Its roof was cleverly arranged to give a pergola effect.  It was quite vine-covered.  The vines hid the glass that made it rain-proof.  In one corner rugs were placed, wicker chairs, a swinging book-rack, and a tea-table.  The lady motioned to Lewis to sit down.  She sat down herself and started drawing off her long gloves.  She looked curiously at Lewis’s face.

“You’re a Leighton yourself, aren’t you?  Some relative to Mrs. Leighton and Natalie?”

Lewis nodded.

“A cousin in some Scotch degree to Natalie,” he said; “I don’t know just what.”  Then he turned his eyes frankly on her.

“Where are they—­Mrs. Leighton and—­and Natalie?”

“They are gone,” said the lady.  “They sold out here almost a year ago and went back to the States.  I have the address somewhere.  I’ll get it for you.”  She went, but was back in a moment.

“Thanks,” said Lewis.  He did not look at her any more or around him.  His eyes fixed vaguely on distance, as one’s eyes do when the mind tells them they are not wanted.

The lady sat perfectly still and silent.  The silence grew and grew until by its own weight it suddenly brought Lewis back to the present and confusion.  He colored.  His lips were opening in apology when the lady spoke.

“Where have you been?” she asked.

Lewis gave her a grateful look.

“I’ve been playing about the old place,” he said, smiling.  “Not alone.  Natalie, Shenton, and I. We’ve been racing through the pineapple-patch, lying on our backs under an orange-tree, visiting the stables, and—­and Manoel’s little house, hiding in the bramble-patch, and peeking over the priest’s wall.”  Lewis waved his hand at the scene that made his words so incongruous.  “Sounds to you like rank nonsense, I suppose.”

The lady shook her head.

“No,” she said—­“no, it doesn’t sound like nonsense.”

Then he asked her about Natalie.  She told him many little things.  At the end she said: 

“I feel that I’ve told you nothing.  Natalie is one of those persons that we generally call a ‘queer girl’ because we haven’t the intelligence or the expression to define them.  Our local wit said that she was a girl whom every man considered himself good enough for, but that considered herself too good for any man.  That was unjust, but it sounded true because sooner or later all the eligibles lined up before Natalie—­and in vain.”  The lady frowned.  “But she wasn’t selfish or hard.  She used to let them hang on till they just dropped off.  She was one of those women that nothing surprises.  Her train was made up of the ugly and the handsome—­bore, prude, wit, and libertine.  She gave them all something; you could feel it.  I think she got tired of giving and never taking.”