assimilated him by a sort of atmospheric sense. She was sure of nothing
but the attention paid him in a certain very goodish house, by people
whom she heard talking in unintelligible but unmistakable praise, when
she said, casually, with a liquid glitter of her sweet, small eyes,
"I wish you would come down to my place, Mr. Verrian. I'm asking a few
young people for Christmas week. Will you?"

"Why, thank you--thank you very much," Verrian said, waiting to hear more
in explanation of the hospitality launched at him. He had never seen
Mrs. Westangle till then, or heard of her, and he had not the least
notion where she lived. But she seemed to have social authority, though
Verrian, in looking round at his hostess and her daughter, who stood
near, letting people take leave, learned nothing from their common smile.
Mrs. Westangle had glided close to him, in the way she had of getting
very near without apparently having advanced by steps, and she stood
gleaming and twittering up at him.

"I shall send you a little note; I won't let you forget," she said. Then
she suddenly shook hands with the ladies of the house and was flashingly
gone.

Verrian thought he might ask the daughter of the house, "And if I don't
forget, am I engaged to spend Christmas week with her?"

The girl laughed. "If she doesn't forget, you are. But you'll have a
good time. She'll know how to manage that." Other guests kept coming up
to take leave, and Verrian, who did not want to go just yet, was retired
to the background, where the girl's voice, thrown over her shoulder at
him, reached him in the words, as gay as if they were the best of the
joke, "It's on the Sound."