architectural?  Didn’t he go to a table d’hote, at two francs twenty-five, in the Rue Bonaparte, which I then frequented, and didn’t he wear spectacles and a Scotch plaid arranged in a manner which seemed to say “I’ve trustworthy information that that’s the way they do it in the Highlands”?  Wasn’t he exemplary to positive irritation, and very poor, poor to positive oppression, so that I supposed he had no overcoat and his tartan would be what he slept under at night?  Wasn’t he working very hard still, and wouldn’t he be, in the natural course, not yet satisfied that he had found his feet or knew enough to launch out?  He would be a man of long preparations—­Miss Mavis’s white face seemed to speak to one of that.  It struck me that if I had been in love with her I shouldn’t have needed to lay such a train for the closer approach.  Architecture was his line and he was a pupil of the Ecole des Beaux Arts.  This reminiscence grew so much more vivid with me that at the end of ten minutes I had an odd sense of knowing—­by implication—­a good deal about the young lady.

Even after it was settled that Mrs. Nettlepoint would do everything possible for her the other visitor sat sipping our iced liquid and telling how “low” Mr. Mavis had been.  At this period the girl’s silence struck me as still more conscious, partly perhaps because she deprecated her mother’s free flow—­she was enough of an “improvement” to measure that—­and partly because she was too distressed by the idea of leaving her infirm, her perhaps dying father.  It wasn’t indistinguishable that they were poor and that she would take out a very small purse for her trousseau.  For Mr. Porterfield to make up the sum his own case would have had moreover greatly to change.  If he had enriched himself by the successful practice of his profession I had encountered no edifice he had reared—­his reputation hadn’t come to my ears.

Mrs. Nettlepoint notified her new friends that she was a very inactive person at sea:  she was prepared to suffer to the full with Miss Mavis, but not prepared to pace the deck with her, to struggle with her, to accompany her to meals.  To this the girl replied that she would trouble her little, she was sure:  she was convinced she should prove a wretched sailor and spend the voyage on her back.  Her mother scoffed at this picture, prophesying perfect weather and a lovely time, and I interposed to the effect that if I might be trusted, as a tame bachelor fairly sea-seasoned, I should be delighted to give the new member of our party an arm or any other countenance whenever she should require it.  Both the ladies thanked me for this—­taking my professions with no sort of abatement—­and the elder one declared that we were evidently going to be such a sociable group that it was too bad to have to stay at home.  She asked Mrs. Nettlepoint if there were any one else in our party, and when our hostess mentioned her son—­there was a chance of his embarking but (wasn’t it absurd?) he hadn’t decided yet—­she returned with extraordinary candour:  “Oh dear, I do hope he’ll go:  that would be so lovely for Grace.”