with. "Oh, down there in the hall," he said, "after everybody but March
and the Frenchman had gone. Aunt Lucile began fussing about you. She was
rather up in the air, anyway. She'd done the nonchalant, all
right,--overdone it a bit in fact--as long as there was any one around
to play up to. But when we had got rid of the Novellis--they were the
last--she did a balloon ascension. She had a fit or two in general and
then came round to wondering about you. Wanted to know when we'd last
seen you--what _could_ have happened to you,--that sort of thing. I'd
been having a little talk with Graham so I supposed I knew. But of
course I said nothing about that."

He was looking rather fixedly away from her and so missed her frown of
incomprehension. "Well, but father?" she asked.

It had been coming over him that what his father had said was not just
what he wanted to report to Mary. Not while she felt about him as she
had confessed, down there in New York, she did. But he had let himself
in for it.

"Why, it wasn't much," he said; "just that nothing could have happened to
you; that you wouldn't 'fall off anything and break.' What you said about
plaster of Paris made me think of it. He was only trying to get Aunt
Lucile quieted down."

"While he had Paula on his mind, he didn't want to be bothered about me.
That's natural enough, of course." Her dry brittle tone was anything but
reassuring. Still without looking at her, he hurried on.

"Well, it _is_ natural that he should be worried about Paula. I know
how I'd feel about a thing like that. It was rather weird while we