“Then if you chance it,” I returned, “you’ll be more immoral still.”

“Your reasoning’s strange,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint; “when it was you who tried to put into my head yesterday that she had asked him to come.”

“Yes, but in good faith.”

“What do you mean, in such a case, by that?”

“Why, as girls of that sort do.  Their allowance and measure in such matters,” I expounded, “is much larger than that of young persons who have been, as you say, very well brought up; and yet I’m not sure that on the whole I don’t think them thereby the more innocent.  Miss Mavis is engaged, and she’s to be married next week, but it’s an old old story, and there’s no more romance in it than if she were going to be photographed.  So her usual life proceeds, and her usual life consists—­and that of ces demoiselles in general—­in having plenty of gentlemen’s society.  Having it I mean without having any harm from it.”

Mrs. Nettlepoint had given me due attention.  “Well, if there’s no harm from it what are you talking about and why am I immoral?”

I hesitated, laughing.  “I retract—­you’re sane and clear.  I’m sure she thinks there won’t be any harm,” I added.  “That’s the great point.”

“The great point?”

“To be settled, I mean.”

“Mercy, we’re not trying them!” cried my friend.  “How can we settle it?”

“I mean of course in our minds.  There will be nothing more interesting these next ten days for our minds to exercise themselves upon.”

“Then they’ll get terribly tired of it,” said Mrs. Nettlepoint.

“No, no—­because the interest will increase and the plot will thicken.  It simply can’t not,” I insisted.  She looked at me as if she thought me more than Mephistophelean, and I went back to something she had lately mentioned.  “So she told you everything in her life was dreary?”

“Not everything, but most things.  And she didn’t tell me so much as I guessed it.  She’ll tell me more the next time.  She’ll behave properly now about coming in to see me; I told her she ought to.”

“I’m glad of that,” I said.  “Keep her with you as much as possible.”

“I don’t follow you closely,” Mrs. Nettlepoint replied, “but so far as I do I don’t think your remarks in the best taste.”

“Well, I’m too excited, I lose my head in these sports,” I had to recognise—­“cold-blooded as you think me.  Doesn’t she like Mr. Porterfield?”

“Yes, that’s the worst of it.”

I kept making her stare.  “The worst of it?”

“He’s so good—­there’s no fault to be found with him.  Otherwise she’d have thrown it all up.  It has dragged on since she was eighteen:  she became engaged to him before he went abroad to study.  It was one of those very young and perfectly needless blunders that parents in America might make so much less possible than they do.  The thing is to insist on one’s daughter waiting, on the engagement’s being long; and then, after you’ve got that started, to take it on every occasion as little seriously as possible—­to make it die out.  You can easily tire it to death,” Mrs. Nettlepoint competently stated.  “However,” she concluded, “Mr. Porterfield has taken this one seriously for some years.  He has done his part to keep it alive.  She says he adores her.”