pleasures tire me a little; and a little discontent creeps in. It is
ungrateful and ungracious of me to say so, but I did wish so much to go
to college--to have something to care for--as mother cared for father's
work. Why, do you know that my mother accidentally discovered the
thirty-seventh sign in the Karian Signary?"

"No," said Selwyn, "I did not know that." He forbore to add that he did
not know what a Signary resembled or where Karia might be.

Miss Erroll's elbow was on her knee, her chin resting within her open
palm.

"Do you know about my parents?" she asked. "They were lost in the
_Argolis_ off Cyprus. You have heard. I think they meant that I should
go to college--as well as Gerald; I don't know. Perhaps after all it is
better for me to do what other young girls do. Besides, I enjoy it; and
my mother did, too, when she was my age, they say. She was very much
gayer than I am; my mother was a beauty and a brilliant woman. . . . But
there were other qualities. I--have her letters to father when Gerald
and I were very little; and her letters to us from London. . . . I have
missed her more, this winter, it seems to me, than even in that dreadful
time--"

She sat silent, chin in hand, delicate fingers restlessly worrying her
red lips; then, in quick impulse:

"You will not mistake me, Captain Selwyn! Nina and Austin have been
perfectly sweet to me and to Gerald."

"I am not mistaking a word you utter," he said.