I will not pretend that this thought finally drove me from the scene, for I am of a very hardy make when it comes to the most frightful sort of suppositions. But the afternoon was wearing away, and we must go sometime. It seemed better also to leave the gayety at its height: the river covered with soft colors, and the barges and house-boats by the brink, with their companies responsive in harmonies of muslin and gauze and lace to those afloat; the crowds on the opposite shore in constant movement, and in vivid agitation when the bell and the pistol announced a racing event. We parted with our friends on the barge, and found our way through the gypsy crones squatted on the grass, weaving the web of fate and selling brooms and brushes in the intervals of their mystical employ, or cosily gossiping together; and then we took for the station the harmless fly which we had forever renounced as predatory in the morning. It was not yet the rush-hour for the run back to London, and we easily got an empty compartment, in which we were presently joined by a group of extremely handsome people, all of a southern type, but differing in age and sex. There were a mother and a daughter, and a father evidently soon to become a father-in-law, and the young man who was to make him so. The women were alike in their white gowns, and alike in their dark beauty, but the charms of the mother had expanded in a bulk incredible of the slender daughter. She and her father were rather silent, and the talk was mainly between the mother and the future of the girl. They first counted up the day's expenses, and the cost of each dish they had had at luncheon. “Then there was the champagne,” the lady insisted. “It isn't so much when you count that out; and you know we chose to have it.” They all discussed the sum, and agreed that if they had not wanted the champagne their holiday would not have cost inordinately. “And now,” the mother continued to the young man, “you must order that box for the opera as soon as ever you reach the hotel. Order it by telephone. Give the girl your boutonnière; that will jolly her. Get a four-guinea box opposite the royal box.”