business?"

"No," I said suavely. "I call this pleasure--an unexpected
pleasure. And unless Miss Alice objects--"

I half turned to her. She flung at me an angry and contemptuous
"Don't care!" and leaning her elbow on her knees took her chin in
her hand--a Jacobus chin undoubtedly. And those heavy eyelids,
this black irritated stare reminded me of Jacobus, too--the wealthy
merchant, the respected one. The design of her eyebrows also was
the same, rigid and ill-omened. Yes! I traced in her a
resemblance to both of them. It came to me as a sort of surprising
remote inference that both these Jacobuses were rather handsome men
after all. I said:

"Oh! Then I shall stare at you till you smile."

She favoured me again with an even more viciously scornful "Don't
care!"

The old woman broke in blunt and shrill:

"Hear his impudence! And you too! Don't care! Go at least and
put some more clothes on. Sitting there like this before this
sailor riff-raff."

The sun was about to leave the Pearl of the Ocean for other seas,
for other lands. The walled garden full of shadows blazed with
colour as if the flowers were giving up the light absorbed during
the day. The amazing old woman became very explicit. She