Baldwyn Bramble had been smoking a cigar, and had tossed away the still lighted end—overboard, he believed, but it had fallen short, dropping on the deck almost under the chair which Fulvia now took. Nobody saw it fall there except Daisy, and Daisy forgot the fact in a second. The red end smouldered still, and when Fulvia sat down, her dress rested upon it. Had she worn a woollen fabric, no harm might have resulted; but a washing summer fabric is a different matter. Fulvia noted the strong scent, but she was unconscious of her peril. Mr. Bramble presently walked to the farther end of the launch, and Malcolm disappeared behind the funnel. Nigel was talking to Mrs. Duncan, Annibel, and Daisy, beyond hearing. Only Anice and Rose remained near where Fulvia sat. Fulvia had lost the joke after all. "What were you laughing at just now?" she asked. "Oh, just something Mr. Elvey said," Rose answered. "What was it, Anice? I couldn't quite understand, only everybody laughed, and so—" "And so you did too!" Fulvia spoke with a touch of disdain. She counted Rose an inane specimen of giggling young ladyhood. "Well, of course, I couldn't keep out of it," explained Rose. "It looks so stupid to sit with a solemn face when other people are laughing." "Why didn't you ask?" "Oh!—Ask for a joke to be explained! That is more stupid still. Baldwyn always says a joke never bears being repeated. Besides, one looks so silly, not to understand at once." "I wonder whether 'to be' or 'to look' is the worst," murmured Fulvia. Rose's density was proof against this, or she might have been offended. "Anice can tell you," she said. No, Anice could not. Anice, like Rose, had laughed because others laughed, not because she divined the joke. Fulvia shrugged her shoulders, and was mute. Some seconds, or some two or three minutes, might have passed—Fulvia could not afterwards recall which—when she became conscious of a peculiar odour, not only the scent of the cigar but a distinct smell of burning. Then she was vaguely aware of a blue smoke. She had gone back in thought to Nigel's future, and was cogitating deeply, so deeply that though physical consciousness was awake, her mind did not at once respond. An impulse to escape from the girls' chatter came over her, and she stood up, moving a few steps away from her sheltered seat, into the breeze; the very worst thing she could have done, had she only known it.