"Could it have been Mr. Melville?... I know! You mean Mr. Chatteris! I remember, he came down with us one morning. A tall young man with fair-rather curlyish you might say-hair, wasn't it? And a rather thoughtful face. He was dressed all in white linen and he sat on the beach."

"I fancy he did," said the Sea Lady.

"He's not my son. He's-he's a friend. He's engaged to Adeline, to the elder Miss Glendower. He was stopping here for a night or so. I daresay he'll come again on his way back from Paris. Dear me! Fancy my having a son like that!"

The Sea Lady was not quite prompt in replying.

"What a stupid mistake for me to make!" she said slowly; and then with more animation, "Of course, now I think, he's much too old to be your son!"

"Well, he's thirty-two!" said Mrs. Bunting with a smile.

"It's preposterous."

"I won't say that."

"But I saw him only at a distance, you know," said the Sea Lady; and then, "And so he is engaged to Miss Glendower? And Miss Glendower--?"

"Is the young lady in the purple robe who--"

"Who carried a book?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Bunting, "that's the one. They've been engaged three months."

"Dear me!" said the Sea Lady. "She seemed- And is he very much in love with her?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Bunting.

"Very much?"

"Oh-of course. If he wasn't, he wouldn't--"

"Of course," said the Sea Lady thoughtfully.

"And it's such an excellent match in every way. Adeline's just in the very position to help him--"

And Mrs. Bunting it would seem briefly but clearly supplied an indication of the precise position of Mr. Chatteris, not omitting even that he was the nephew of an earl, as indeed why should she omit it?-and the splendid prospects of his alliance with Miss Glendower's plebeian but extensive wealth. The Sea Lady listened gravely. "He is young, he is able, he may still be anything-anything. And she is so earnest, so clever herself-always reading. She even reads Blue Books-government Blue Books I mean-dreadful statistical schedulely things. And the condition of the poor and all those things. She knows more about the condition of the poor than any one I've ever met; what they earn and what they eat, and how many of them live in a room. So dreadfully crowded, you know-perfectly shocking.... She is just the helper he needs. So dignified-so capable of giving political parties and influencing people, so earnest! And you know she can talk to workmen and take an interest in trades unions, and in quite astonishing things. I always think she's just Marcella come to life."

And from that the good lady embarked upon an illustrative but involved anecdote of Miss Glendower's marvellous blue-bookishness....

"He'll come here again soon?" the Sea Lady asked quite carelessly in the midst of it.

The query was carried away and lost in the anecdote, so that later the Sea Lady repeated her question even more carelessly.

But Mrs. Bunting did not know whether the Sea Lady sighed at all or not. She thinks not. She was so busy telling her all about everything that I don't think she troubled very much to see how her information was received.

What mind she had left over from her own discourse was probably centred on the tail.