Mrs. Winthrop let the hand with which she had made her little gesture drop. She stood looking at him. But he did not add anything to his remark, or turn his glance from the lateen-sails. "What sort of a person, then, do I look like?" she said. He turned. She was smiling; he smiled also. "I was alluding merely to the time you named. As it happened, my aunt had mentioned to me by chance your breakfast hours." "That was not all, I think." "You are very good to be interested." "I am not good; only curious. Pray tell me." "I have so little imagination, Mrs. Winthrop, that I cannot invent the proper charming interpretation as I ought. As to bald truth, of course you cannot expect me to present you with that during a first visit of ceremony." "The first visit will, I hope, be a long one; you must come and stay with us. As to ceremony, if this is your idea of it--" "--What must I be when unceremonious! I suppose you are thinking," said Ford, laughing. "On the whole, I had better make no attempts. The owl, in his own character, is esteemed an honest bird; but let him not try to be a nightingale." "Come as owl, nightingale, or what you please, so long as you come. When you do, I shall ask you again what you meant." "If you are going to hold it over me, perhaps I had better tell you now." "Much better." "I only meant, then, that Mrs. Winthrop did not strike me as at all the sort of person who would allow anything prosaic to interfere with her poetical, heartfelt enthusiasms." She laughed gayly. "You are delightful. You have such a heavy apparatus for fibbing that it becomes fairly stately. You do not believe I have any enthusiasms at all," she added. Her eyes were dark blue, with long lashes; they were very fine eyes. "I will believe whatever you please," said John Ford. "Very well. Believe what I tell you." "You include only what you tell in words?" "Plainly, you are not troubled by timidity," said the lady, laughing a second time. "On the contrary, it is excess of timidity. It makes me desperate and crude." They had walked on, and now came up with the others. "Does he amuse you?" said Sylvia, in a low tone, as Cousin Walpole in his turn walked onward with the new-comer. "I heard you laughing." "Yes; but he is not at all what you said. He is so shy and ill at ease that it is almost painful." "Dear me!" said the aunt, with concern. "The best thing, then, will be for him to come and stay with us. You have so much company that it will be good for him; his shyness will wear off." "I have invited him, but I doubt his coming," said the lady of the manor. The outlook was a little terrace built out over the water. Mrs. Winthrop seated herself and took off her garden-hat (Mrs. Winthrop had a very graceful head, and thick, soft, brown hair). "Not so close, Gibbon," she said, as the shaggy dog laid himself down beside her. "You call your dog Gibbon?" said Ford.