Terence smoked and Arthur smoked and Evelyn smoked, so that the air was full of the mist and fragrance of good tobacco.  In the intervals when no one spoke, they heard far off the low murmur of the sea, as the waves quietly broke and spread the beach with a film of water, and withdrew to break again.  The cool green light fell through the leaves of the tree, and there were soft crescents and diamonds of sunshine upon the plates and the tablecloth.  Mrs. Thornbury, after watching them all for a time in silence, began to ask Rachel kindly questions—­When did they all go back?  Oh, they expected her father.  She must want to see her father—­there would be a great deal to tell him, and (she looked sympathetically at Terence) he would be so happy, she felt sure.  Years ago, she continued, it might have been ten or twenty years ago, she remembered meeting Mr. Vinrace at a party, and, being so much struck by his face, which was so unlike the ordinary face one sees at a party, that she had asked who he was, and she was told that it was Mr. Vinrace, and she had always remembered the name,—­an uncommon name,—­and he had a lady with him, a very sweet-looking woman, but it was one of those dreadful London crushes, where you don’t talk,—­you only look at each other,—­and although she had shaken hands with Mr. Vinrace, she didn’t think they had said anything.  She sighed very slightly, remembering the past.

Then she turned to Mr. Pepper, who had become very dependent on her, so that he always chose a seat near her, and attended to what she was saying, although he did not often make any remark of his own.

“You who know everything, Mr. Pepper,” she said, “tell us how did those wonderful French ladies manage their salons?  Did we ever do anything of the same kind in England, or do you think that there is some reason why we cannot do it in England?”

Mr. Pepper was pleased to explain very accurately why there has never been an English salon.  There were three reasons, and they were very good ones, he said.  As for himself, when he went to a party, as one was sometimes obliged to, from a wish not to give offence—­his niece, for example, had been married the other day—­he walked into the middle of the room, said “Ha! ha!” as loud as ever he could, considered that he had done his duty, and walked away again.  Mrs. Thornbury protested.  She was going to give a party directly she got back, and they were all to be invited, and she should set people to watch Mr. Pepper, and if she heard that he had been caught saying “Ha! ha!” she would—­she would do something very dreadful indeed to him.  Arthur Venning suggested that what she must do was to rig up something in the nature of a surprise—­a portrait, for example, of a nice old lady in a lace cap, concealing a bath of cold water, which at a signal could be sprung on Pepper’s head; or they’d have a chair which shot him twenty feet high directly he sat on it.