“Never speak to him again?” suggested Miss Cotton.

“No, I don’t say that.  But she would think twice before marrying him.”

“And then do it,” said Mrs. Stamwell pensively, with eyes that seemed looking far into the past.

“Yes, and quite right to do it,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “I don’t know that we should be very proud ourselves if we confessed just what caught our fancy in our husbands.  For my part I shouldn’t like to say how much a light hat that Mr. Brinkley happened to be wearing had to do with the matter.”

The ladies broke into another laugh, and then checked themselves, so that Mrs. Pasmer, coming out of the corridor upon them, naturally thought they were laughing at her.  She reflected that if she had been in their place she would have shown greater tact by not stopping just at that instant.

But she did not mind.  She knew that they talked her over, but having a very good conscience, she simply talked them over in return.  “Have you seen my daughter within a few minutes?” she asked.

“She was with Mr. Mavering at the end of the piazza a moment ago,” said Mrs. Brinkley.  “They must leave just gone round the corner of the building.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Pasmer.  She had a novel, with her finger between its leaves, pressed against her heart, after the manner of ladies coming out on hotel piazzas.  She sat down and rested it on her knee, with her hand over the top.

Miss Cotton bent forward, and Mrs. Pasmer lifted her fingers to let her see the name of the book.

“Oh yes,” said Miss Cotton.  “But he’s so terribly pessimistic, don’t you think?”

“What is it?” asked Mrs. Brinkley.

“Fumee,” said Mrs. Pasmer, laying the book title upward on her lap for every one to see.

“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Brinkley, fanning herself.  “Tourguenief.  That man gave me the worst quarter of an hour with his ‘Lisa’ that I ever had.”

“That’s the same as the ‘Nichee des Gentilshommes’, isn’t it?” asked Mrs. Pasmer, with the involuntary superiority of a woman who reads her Tourguenief in French.

“I don’t know.  I had it in English.  I don’t build my ships to cross the sea in, as Emerson says; I take those I find built.”

“Ah!  I was already on the other side,” said Mrs. Pasmer softly.  She added:  “I must get Lisa.  I like a good heart-break; don’t you?  If that’s what gave you the bad moment.”

“Heart-break?  Heart-crush!  Where Lavretsky comes back old to the scene of his love for Lisa, and strikes that chord on the piano—­well, I simply wonder that I’m alive to recommend the book to you.

“Do you know,” said Miss Cotton, very deferentially, “that your daughter always made me think of Lisa?”

“Indeed!” cried Mrs. Pasmer, not wholly pleased, but gratified that she was able to hide her displeasure.  “You make me very curious.”