Mrs. Durrant turned and walked away by herself.

“Clara!” she called.  Clara went to her.

“How unlike they are!” said Miss Eliot.

Mr. Wortley passed them, smoking a cigar.

“Every day I live I find myself agreeing ...” he said as he passed them.

“It’s so interesting to guess ...” murmured Julia Eliot.

“When first we came out we could see the flowers in that bed,” said Elsbeth.

“We see very little now,” said Miss Eliot.

“She must have been so beautiful, and everybody loved her, of course,” said Charlotte.  “I suppose Mr. Wortley ...” she paused.

“Edward’s death was a tragedy,” said Miss Eliot decidedly.

Here Mr. Erskine joined them.

“There’s no such thing as silence,” he said positively.  “I can hear twenty different sounds on a night like this without counting your voices.”

“Make a bet of it?” said Charlotte.

“Done,” said Mr. Erskine.  “One, the sea; two, the wind; three, a dog; four ...”

The others passed on.

“Poor Timothy,” said Elsbeth.

“A very fine night,” shouted Miss Eliot into Mr. Clutterbuck’s ear.

“Like to look at the stars?” said the old man, turning the telescope towards Elsbeth.

“Doesn’t it make you melancholy—­looking at the stars?” shouted Miss Eliot.

“Dear me no, dear me no,” Mr. Clutterbuck chuckled when he understood her.  “Why should it make me melancholy?  Not for a moment—­dear me no.”

“Thank you, Timothy, but I’m coming in,” said Miss Eliot.  “Elsbeth, here’s a shawl.”

“I’m coming in,” Elsbeth murmured with her eye to the telescope.  “Cassiopeia,” she murmured.  “Where are you all?” she asked, taking her eye away from the telescope.  “How dark it is!”

Mrs. Durrant sat in the drawing-room by a lamp winding a ball of wool.  Mr. Clutterbuck read the Times.  In the distance stood a second lamp, and round it sat the young ladies, flashing scissors over silver-spangled stuff for private theatricals.  Mr. Wortley read a book.

“Yes; he is perfectly right,” said Mrs. Durrant, drawing herself up and ceasing to wind her wool.  And while Mr. Clutterbuck read the rest of Lord Lansdowne’s speech she sat upright, without touching her ball.

“Ah, Mr. Flanders,” she said, speaking proudly, as if to Lord Lansdowne himself.  Then she sighed and began to wind her wool again.

“Sit there,” she said.

Jacob came out from the dark place by the window where he had hovered.  The light poured over him, illuminating every cranny of his skin; but not a muscle of his face moved as he sat looking out into the garden.

“I want to hear about your voyage,” said Mrs. Durrant.

“Yes,” he said.

“Twenty years ago we did the same thing.”

“Yes,” he said.  She looked at him sharply.

“He is extraordinarily awkward,” she thought, noticing how he fingered his socks.  “Yet so distinguished-looking.”