Leaning on the broad stone balustrade of the upper terrace, Aline Peters and George Emerson surveyed the malcontents.  Aline gave a little sigh, almost inaudible; but George’s hearing was good.

“I was wondering when you are going to admit it,” he said, shifting his position so that he faced her.

“Admit what?”

“That you can’t stand the prospect; that the idea of being stuck for life with this crowd, like a fly on fly paper, is too much for you; that you are ready to break off your engagement to Freddie and come away and marry me and live happily ever after.”

“George!”

“Well, wasn’t that what it meant?  Be honest!”

“What what meant?”

“That sigh.”

“I didn’t sigh.  I was just breathing.”

“Then you can breathe in this atmosphere!  You surprise me!” He raked the terraces with hostile eyes.  “Look at them!  Look at them—­crawling round like doped beetles.  My dear girl, it’s no use your pretending that this sort of thing wouldn’t kill you.  You’re pining away already.  You’re thinner and paler since you came here.  Gee!  How we shall look back at this and thank our stars that we’re out of it when we’re back in old New York, with the elevated rattling and the street cars squealing over the points, and something doing every step you take.  I shall call you on the ’phone from the office and have you meet me down town somewhere, and we’ll have a bite to eat and go to some show, and a bit of supper afterward and a dance or two; and then go home to our cozy—–­”

“George, you mustn’t—­really!”

“Why mustn’t I?”

“It’s wrong.  You can’t talk like that when we are both enjoying the hospitality—­”

A wild laugh, almost a howl, disturbed the talk of the most adjacent of the perambulating relations.  Colonel Horace Mant, checked in mid-sentence, looked up resentfully at the cause of the interruption.

“I wish somebody would tell me whether it’s that American fellow, Emerson, or young Freddie who’s supposed to be engaged to Miss Peters.  Hanged if you ever see her and Freddie together, but she and Emerson are never to be found apart.  If my respected father-in-law had any sense I should have thought he would have had sense enough to stop that.”

“You forget, my dear Horace,” said the bishop charitably; “Miss Peters and Mr. Emerson have known each other since they were children.”

“They were never nearly such children as Emsworth is now,” snorted the colonel.  “If that girl isn’t in love with Emerson I’ll be—­I’ll eat my hat.”

“No, no,” said the bishop.  “No, no!  Surely not, Horace.  What were you saying when you broke off?”

“I was saying that if a man wanted his relations never to speak to each other again for the rest of their lives the best thing he could do would be to herd them all together in a dashed barrack of a house a hundred miles from anywhere, and then go off and spend all his time prodding dashed flower beds with a spud—­dash it!”