All this was instantaneous: she seemed to read it between the lines of Helena's letter. She recalled, too, between the lines, the tokens that she knew. Archie would look at Harry, as they sat at dinner, then at his mother, then at her, in order that in due time he might look at Helena. And when he spoke to any of them they never got more than one ear and an inattentive mind from him. The other ear and the attention were always with Helena. Helena knew that quite well: no woman or girl could fail to know it, and, by way of response, she had made this Scythian retreat to England. No doubt that was clever of her, but in Jessie's opinion clever people are found out even sooner than stupid ones. The only inexplicable folk are the wise, and wisdom has very little to do with cleverness. Wisdom is perhaps the cleverness of the soul, that looks down with pity on the manoeuvres of the mind. Archie made his absurd entry. He had a dressing-gown on, perhaps some sort of abbreviated bathing-dress, and canvas-shoes. "I didn't dress," he said, "for where's the use of dressing if you are going to undress again almost immediately?" "Aren't you going to work this morning?" asked Jessie. "No. This one day, as Mr. Wordsworth said, we'll give to idleness. I'm going to bathe all the morning instead of half the morning. I want a holiday. I think I'm overworked. What's happening in that foolish England, if you've read the papers?" "I haven't," said she. Suddenly his face changed; he began to talk the secret language, which Jessie understood and Helena counterfeited. "And what other news?" he asked. "You had a letter from somebody." Jessie pretended not to understand what she knew so well. "Yes, I did have a letter," she said, determined that Archie should be more direct than this. "From Helena or mother?" he said carelessly. "I haven't heard from either of them, except that telegram to say they had got home safely." He was talking the secret language still; the very carelessness of his tone betrayed it. "I heard from them both," she said. "The letter was from Helena, and there was an enclosure from Cousin Marion." Archie said nothing in answer to this, but it seemed to the girl that his silence was just as eloquent in the language without words. Eventually he remarked that Harry was very late, and Jessie knew that he had beaten her. He always did, just because he had nothing, with regard to her, at stake. "Archie, I want to talk to you about what they have written to me," she said. "Talk away," said Archie. "I say, what good little fishes!" Jessie was not proposing to yield like that. If he, in the code of the secret language, professed an indifference to what he was longing to hear, she would be indifferent too.