“I don’t know what you imagine between them,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“Well, nothing,” I allowed, “but what was visible on the surface.  It transpired, as the newspapers say, that they were old friends.”

“He met her at some promiscuous party—­I asked him about it afterwards.  She’s not a person”—­my hostess was confident—­“whom he could ever think of seriously.”

“That’s exactly what I believe.”

“You don’t observe—­you know—­you imagine,” Mrs. Nettlepoint continued to argue.  “How do you reconcile her laying a trap for Jasper with her going out to Liverpool on an errand of love?”

Oh I wasn’t to be caught that way!  “I don’t for an instant suppose she laid a trap; I believe she acted on the impulse of the moment.  She’s going out to Liverpool on an errand of marriage; that’s not necessarily the same thing as an errand of love, especially for one who happens to have had a personal impression of the gentleman she’s engaged to.”

“Well, there are certain decencies which in such a situation the most abandoned of her sex would still observe.  You apparently judge her capable—­on no evidence—­of violating them.”

“Ah you don’t understand the shades of things,” I returned.  “Decencies and violations, dear lady—­there’s no need for such heavy artillery!  I can perfectly imagine that without the least immodesty she should have said to Jasper on the balcony, in fact if not in words:  ’I’m in dreadful spirits, but if you come I shall feel better, and that will be pleasant for you too.’”

“And why is she in dreadful spirits?”

“She isn’t!” I replied, laughing.

My poor friend wondered.  “What then is she doing?”

“She’s walking with your son.”

Mrs. Nettlepoint for a moment said nothing; then she treated me to another inconsequence.  “Ah she’s horrid!”

“No, she’s charming!” I protested.

“You mean she’s ’curious’?”

“Well, for me it’s the same thing!”

This led my friend of course to declare once more that I was cold-blooded.  On the afternoon of the morrow we had another talk, and she told me that in the morning Miss Mavis had paid her a long visit.  She knew nothing, poor creature, about anything, but her intentions were good and she was evidently in her own eyes conscientious and decorous.  And Mrs. Nettlepoint concluded these remarks with the sigh “Unfortunate person!”

“You think she’s a good deal to be pitied then?”

“Well, her story sounds dreary—­she told me a good deal of it.  She fell to talking little by little and went from one thing to another.  She’s in that situation when a girl must open herself—­to some woman.”

“Hasn’t she got Jasper?” I asked.

“He isn’t a woman.  You strike me as jealous of him,” my companion added.