“I gave it up long before I ever heard of Banting,” said the stout lady: for it need scarcely be said that there was a stout lady; no tea-party in England ever assembled without one. The individual in the present case was young, and rebellious against the fate which had overtaken her--not of the soft, smiling, and contented kind. “It does us real good,” said Claude, with his softly pathetic voice. “I have seen one or two very sad instances where the fat did not go away, you know, but got limp and flaccid, and the last state of that man was worse than the first. Dear lady, I think you should be very cautious. To make experiments with one’s health is really criminal. We are getting on very nicely with the _renseignements_. Miss Waring has remembered a great deal. She thought she could not tell me anything; but she has remembered a great deal.” “Bordighera? Is that where Constance is?” the ladies said to each other round the low tea-table where Lady Markham was so busy. She smiled upon them all, and answered “Yes,” without any tinge of the embarrassment which perhaps they hoped to see. “But of course as a resident she is not living among the people at the hotels. You know how the people who live in a place hold themselves apart; and the season is almost over. I don’t think that either tourists or invalids passing that way are likely to see very much of Con.” In the meantime, Frances, as young Ramsay had said, had been honestly straining her mind to “remember” what she could about the Marina and the circumstances there. She did not know anything about the east wind, and had no recollection of how it affected the place. She remembered that the sun shone in at the windows all day; which of course meant, as he informed her, a southern exposure; and that in all the hotel gardens, as well as elsewhere, there were palms growing, and hedges of lemons and orange trees; and that at the Angleterre--or was it the Victoria?--the housekeeper was English; along with other details of a similar kind. There were no balls; very few concerts or entertainments of any kind; no afternoon tea-parties. “How could there be?” said Frances, “when there were only ourselves, the Gaunts, and the Durants.” “Only themselves, the Gaunts, and the Durants,” Ramsay wrote down in his little book. “How delightful that must be! Thank you so much, Miss Waring. Usually one has to pay for one’s experience; but thanks to you, I feel that I know all about it. It seems a place in which one could do one’s self every justice. I shall speak to Dr Lull about it at once. I have no doubt he will think it the very place for me.” “You will find it dull,” said Frances, looking at him curiously, wondering was it possible that he could be sincere, or whether this was his way of justifying to himself his intention of following Constance. But nothing could be more steadily matter-of-fact than the young man’s aspect.