she had married Matey Weyburn’s hero:  she would never admit she had been Browny.  Only she was handsome then, and she is handsome now; and she looks on Matey Weyburn now just as she did then.  How strange is the world!  Or how if we are the particular person destined to encounter the strange things of the world?  And fancy J. Masner, and Pinnett major, and young Oakes (liked nothing better than a pretty girl, he strutted boasting at thirteen), and the Frenchy, and the lot, all popping down at the table, and asked the name of the lady sitting like Queen Esther—­how they would roar out!  Boys, of course—­but men, too!—­very few men have a notion of the extraordinary complications and coincidences and cracker-surprises life contains.  Here ’s an instance; Matey Weyburn positively will wear white ducks to play before Aminta Farrell on the first of May cricketing-day.  He happens to have his white ducks on when he sees the Countess of Ormont swimming in the sea; and so he can go in just as if they were all-right bathing-drawers.  In he goes, has a good long swim with her, and when he comes out, says, of his dripping ducks, ’tabula votiva . . . avida vestimenta,’ to remind an old schoolmate of his hopping to the booth at the end of a showery May day, and dedicating them to the laundry in these words.  It seems marvellous.  It was a quaint revival, an hour after breakfast, for little Collett to be acting as intermediary with Selina to request Lady Ormont’s grant of a five-minutes’ interview before the church-bell summoned her.  She was writing letters, and sent the message:  ‘Tell Mr. Weyburn I obey.’  Selina delivered it, uttering ‘obey’ in a demurely comical way, as a word of which the humour might be comprehensible to him.

Aminta stood at the drawing-room window.  She was asking herself whether her recent conduct shrieked coquette to him, or any of the abominable titles showered on the women who take free breath of air one day after long imprisonment.

She said:  ‘Does it mean you are leaving us?’ the moment he was near.

‘Not till evening or to-morrow, as it may happen,’ he answered:  ’I have one or two things to say, if you will spare the time.’

‘All my time,’ said she, smiling to make less of the heart’s reply; and he stepped into the room.

They had not long back been Matey and Browny, and though that was in another element, it would not sanction the Lady Ormont and Mr. Weyburn now.  As little could it be Aminta and Matthew.  Brother and sister they were in the spirit’s world, but in this world the titles had a sound of imposture.  And with a great longing to call her by some allying name, he rejected ‘friend’ for its insufficiency and commonness, notwithstanding the entirely friendly nature of the burden to be spoken.  Friend, was a title that ran on quicksands:  an excuse that tried for an excuse.  He distinguished in himself simultaneously, that the hesitation and beating about for a name had its origin in an imperfect frankness when he sent his message:  the fretful desire to be with her, close to her, hearing her, seeing her, besides the true wish to serve her.  He sent it after swinging round abruptly from an outlook over the bordering garden tamarisks on a sea now featureless, desolately empty.