"Oh I don't care; I shall save him!" she cried as we went, and with an
extravagance, as I felt, of sincerity. At the same moment two ladies,
apparently English, came toward us--scattered groups had been sitting
there and the inmates of the hotel were moving to and fro--and I
observed the immediate charming transition, the fruit of such years of
social practice, by which, as they greeted us, her tension and her
impatience dropped to recognition and pleasure. They stopped to speak to
her and she enquired with sweet propriety as to the "continued
improvement" of their sister. I strolled on and she presently rejoined
me; after which she had a peremptory note. "Come away from this--come
down into the garden." We descended to that blander scene, strolled
through it and paused on the border of the lake.



V

The charm of the evening had deepened, the stillness was like a solemn
expression on a beautiful face and the whole air of the place divine. In
the fading light my nephew's boat was too far out to be perceived. I
looked for it a little and then, as I gave it up, remarked that from
such an excursion as that, on such a lake and at such an hour, a young
man and a young woman of common sensibility could only come back doubly
pledged to each other.

To this observation Mrs. Pallant's answer was, superficially at least,
irrelevant; she said after a pause: "With you, my dear man, one has
certainly to dot one's 'i's.' Haven't you discovered, and didn't I tell
you at Homburg, that we're miserably poor?"