"I don't know. He said that he looked thirty-four."

"Yes; _she_ was always a forward thing too,--with her freckles," said Mrs. Erwin, musingly, as if lost in reminiscences, not wholly pleasing, of Miss Staniford.

"_He_ has freckles," admitted Lydia.

"Yes, it's the one," said Mrs. Erwin. "He couldn't have known what your family was from anything you said?"

"We never talked about our families."

"Oh, I dare say! You talked about yourselves?"

"Yes."

"All the time?"

"Pretty nearly."

"And he didn't try to find out who or what you were?"

"He asked a great deal about South Bradfield."

"Of course, that was where he thought you had always belonged." Mrs.

Erwin lay quiescent for a while, in apparent uncertainty as to how she should next attack the subject. "How did you first meet?"

Lydia began with the scene on Lucas Wharf, and little by little told the whole story up to the moment of their parting at Trieste. There were lapses and pauses in the story, which her aunt was never at a loss to fill aright. At the end she said, "If it were not for his promising to come here and see you, I should say Mr. Staniford had been flirting, and as it is he may not regard it as anything more than flirtation. Of course, there was his being jealous of Mr. Dunham and Mr. Hicks, as he certainly was; and his wanting to explain about that lady at Messina--yes, that looked peculiar; but he may not have meant anything by it. His parting so at Trieste with you, that might be either because he was embarra.s.sed at its having got to be such a serious thing, or because he really felt badly. Lydia," she asked at last, "what made _you_ think he cared for you?"

"I don't know," said the girl; her voice had sunk to a husky whisper. "I didn't believe it till he said he wanted me to be his--conscience, and tried to make me say he was good, and--"

"That's a certain kind of man's way of flirting. It may mean nothing at all. I could tell in an instant, if I saw him."

"He said he would be here this afternoon," murmured Lydia, tremulously.

"This afternoon!" cried Mrs. Erwin. "I must get up!"

At her toilette she had the exaltation and fury of a champion arming for battle.

XXV.

Mr. Erwin entered about the completion of her preparations, and without turning round from her gla.s.s she said, "I want you to think of the worst thing you can, Henshaw. I don't see how I'm ever to lift up my head again." As if this word had reminded her of her head, she turned it from side to side, and got the effect in the gla.s.s, first of one ear-ring, and then of the other. Her husband patiently waited, and she now confronted him. "You may as well know first as last, Henshaw, and I want you to prepare yourself for it. Nothing can be done, and you will just have to live through it. Lydia--has come over--on that ship--alone,--with three young men,--and not the shadow--not the ghost--of another woman--on board!" Mrs. Erwin gesticulated with her hand-gla.s.s in delivering the words, in a manner at once intensely vivid and intensely solemn, yet somehow falling short of the due tragic effect. Her husband stood pulling his mustache straight down, while his wife turned again to the mirror, and put the final touches to her personal appearance with hands which she had the effect of having desperately washed of all responsibility. He stood so long in this meditative mood that she was obliged to be peremptory with his image in the gla.s.s. "Well?" she cried.

"Why, my dear," said Mr. Erwin, at last, "they were all Americans together, you know."

"And what difference does that make?" demanded Mrs. Erwin, whirling from his image to the man again.

"Why, of course, you know, it isn't as if they were--English." Mrs.

Erwin flung down three hair-pins upon her dressing-case, and visibly despaired. "Of course you don't expect your countrymen--" His wife's appearance was here so terrible that he desisted, and resumed by saying, "Don't be vexed, my dear. I--I rather like it, you know. It strikes me as a genuine bit of American civilization."

"American civilization! Oh, Henshaw!" wailed Mrs. Erwin, "is it possible that after all I've said, and done, and lived, you still think that any one but a girl from the greenest little country place could do such a thing as that? Well, it is no use trying to enlighten English people.

You like it, do you? Well, I'm not sure that the Englishman who misunderstands American things and likes them isn't a little worse than the Englishman who misunderstands them and dislikes them. You _all_ misunderstand them. And would you like it, if one of the young men had been making love to Lydia?"

The amateur of our civilization hesitated and was serious, but he said at last, "Why, you know, I'm not surprised. She's so uncommonly pretty.

I--I suppose they're engaged?" he suggested.

His wife held her peace for scorn. Then she said, "The gentleman is of a very good Boston family, and would no more think of engaging himself to a young girl without the knowledge of her friends than you would.

Besides, he's been in Europe a great deal."

"I wish I could meet some Americans who hadn't been in Europe," said Mr.

Erwin. "I should like to see what you call the simon-pure American. As for the young man's not engaging himself, it seems to me that he didn't avail himself of his national privileges. I should certainly have done it in his place, if I'd been an American."

"Well, if you'd been an American, you wouldn't," answered his wife.

"Why?"

"Because an American would have had too much delicacy."

"I don't understand that."

"I know you don't, Henshaw. And there's where you show yourself an Englishman."

"Really," said her husband, "you're beginning to crow, my dear. Come, I like that a great deal better than your cringing to the effete despotisms of the Old World, as your Fourth of July orators have it.

It's almost impossible to get a bit of good honest bounce out of an American, nowadays,--to get him to spread himself, as you say."

"All that is neither here nor there, Henshaw," said his wife. "The question is how to receive Mr. Staniford--that's his name--when he comes. How are we to regard him? He's coming here to see Lydia, and she thinks he's coming to propose."

"Excuse me, but how does she regard him?"

"Oh, there's no question about that, poor child. She's _dead_ in love with him, and can't understand why he didn't propose on shipboard."

"And she isn't an Englishman, either!" exulted Mr. Erwin. "It appears that there are Americans and Americans, and that the men of your nation have more delicacy than the women like."

"Don't be silly," said his wife. "Of course, women always think what they would do in such cases, if they were men; but if men did what women think they would do if they were men, the women would be disgusted."

"Oh!"

"Yes. Her feeling in the matter is no guide."

"Do you know his family?" asked Mr. Erwin.

"I think I do. Yes, I'm sure I do."

"Are they nice people?"

"Haven't I told you they were a good Boston family?"