Mr. Andrews didn't deny her statement, nor a great many others that she made, but he seemed to find it very difficult to satisfy her curiosity. In fact, she got very little out without mining for it. She asked the hour when they first sighted the barque, and she got it. Two o'clock. Then the course they took, and the changes of the wind, and the deviations that she made, and the reasons that they did not gain upon her for an hour or more. All this might have been interesting to a sea-faring mind, but not to Miss Varian's. She asked questions and got answers, but she fretted and didn't seem to find herself much ahead. Missy knew Mr. Andrews had come over to tell _her_ all about it--but not Miss Varian. He really did not mean to be obstinate, but he couldn't tell the story with the others present. Missy gathered a few bald facts, to be filled out later from the narrative of others. She didn't feel a consuming curiosity. Jay was here, the woman wasn't. That was enough for the present. She felt a far greater interest in those few words Mr. Andrews had been interrupted in saying. They went over and over in her mind. She only half attended to Miss Varian's catechism. "Well," cried Goneril, who was hopelessly jolted out of her place by the events of yesterday, "well, one would think you'd had a child stolen every other day this summer, by the way you take it. Captain Symonds, over on the Neck, made twice the fuss about his calf, last autumn. I don't believe yet he talks about much else." Miss Varian gave her maid a sharp reprimand, and asked Mr. Andrews another question in the same breath. "How did the French woman act when the warrant was served on her?" "Oh, well, just as any Frenchwoman would have acted under the circumstances, I suppose. You know they're apt to make a scene whether there's any excuse for it or not." "But did she cry, or scold, or threaten, or swear, or coax, or what?" "Why, a little of all, I think; a good deal of all, indeed, I might say. She tired us out, I know." "But did she seem frightened? How did she take it? What was the first thing she said when she saw the officer?" "Upon my word, I have forgotten what she said. I heard Jay's voice in the cabin, and I was thinking more about him, I suppose." "But what excuse did she make for herself? How did she put it?" "Oh, a woman never has any trouble to find excuses. She seemed to have plenty." "But what possessed you to be so soft-hearted as to let her go?" "What did I want of her? I was only too happy that she should go, the further off the better." "I must say I think you were ridiculously weak." "That is just possible." "And she, and the wretch she called her husband, all are on their way to South America?" "I hope so, I am sure." "What did the captain say? How could he answer for stopping to take up the party in the night? Did he pretend to be ignorant of what they were about?"