"So you're quite alive and well to-day!" she said to him presently. "Will you believe that I picked up the _Gazette_ this morning with fear and trembling?" "Oh--thank you--yes! We eluded Mr. Hackley's well-meant attentions with marvelous dexterity and success." "Ah, you still don't take it seriously, I see. I'm going to make one more effort to frighten you to-day--but I'm afraid you are one of these terribly reckless people who think being safe is too tame to be interesting. What do you think of our poor little city, Mr. Varney?" "I? I assure you," he said, turning a gay face toward her, "I think it positively the most exciting town I ever saw in my life. But then, of course, I 've had unusual privileges. What is much more important--what do you think of it?" "Of course, I love it. My mother went here to boarding school a great, great many years ago. No, not that--some years ago. She fell in love with the place on account of the scenery, and the air, which she says is fresher than you can get in other places. Personally, I believe that the same quality can be had elsewhere, but she says not at all. So when we--left New York, nothing would do for her but to come straight here." "But don't you find it a little dull?" "Dull! Why," she cried, after a moment, "you talk exactly the way she does." "May I offer you an olive?" She took it daintily in her fingers, bit it and resumed: "I suppose your metropolitan idea is that a person would be buried alive in Hunston?" A sunny shaft broke in from without and became entangled with her hair, which was in some ways so curiously like it. McTosh, whose eye was everywhere, promptly lowered a shade two inches--the one blunder he made that day. "Isn't it?" "That would depend altogether on the person." "Me." "I do think so, decidedly." "Really you and my mother would be very congenial." "McTosh, the bread," said Peter's cool voice. Mrs. Marne, who had been interested by Peter's taciturnity and fascinated by his waistcoat, had been leading that ordinarily masterful man something of a conversational dance. Detached for the moment by his demand for provender, she called across the table: "Mary, I herewith invite you to attend the Culture Club meeting at four o'clock this afternoon, to lead the applause for my paper on Immanuel Kant. Pinky wrote it and--" "Before any court in the land," said Hare, lifting his glance above squab _en casserole_, "I am prepared to establish my innocence of this charge." "If he positively will not take no for an answer," continued Mrs. Marne, "you may bring John Richards along. No claret, thank you, Mr. Maginnis. Men, it is true, are not admitted to the sacred mysteries, but I will arrange to have him seated on the piazza where he may eavesdrop the whole thing through the long French window." "Unfortunately," said Mary, "he has to go to Albany this afternoon, I believe." "To resume our conversation, Mrs. Marne," said Peter.