Our talk at the table was altogether of frivolous things. Not by so much as a look did Mistress Joan recall to me the conversation, intimate and outspoken, which had passed between us at Dieppe. I might have been the veriest dreamer to remember it all—the half-expressed plea for pity on her part, the doubt upon mine. How could one believe it of this little coquette, prattling of the theatres of Paris, the shops of Vienna, or the famous Sherry’s of New York. Had we been a supper party at the Savoy, the occasion could not have been celebrated with greater levity. Of the people’s history, I learned absolutely nothing at all that I did not know already. They had a house on the banks of the Hudson River, an apartment in Paris; in London they always stayed at hotels. General Fordibras was devoted to his yacht. Miss Aston adored Jane Austen, and considered the Imperial Theatre to be the Mecca of all good American ladies. Nonsense, I say, and chiefly immaterial nonsense. But two facts came to me which I cared to make a note of. The first of them dealt with Joan Fordibras’s departure from Dieppe and her arrival at Santa Maria. “My, I was cross,” she exclaimed _à propos_, “just to think that one might have gone on to Aix!” “Then you left Dieppe in a hurry?” I commented. She replied quite unsuspectingly: “They shot us into the yacht like an expressed trunk. I was in such a temper that I tore my lace dress all to pieces on the something or other. Miss Aston, she looked daggers. I don’t know just how daggers look, but she looked them. The Captain said he wouldn’t have to blow the siren if she would only speak up.” “My dear Joan, whatever are you saying? Captain Doubleday would never so forget himself. He sent roses to my cabin directly I went on board.” “Because he wanted you to help navigate the ship, cousin. He said you were a born seaman. Now, when I go back to London——” “Are you returning this winter?” I asked with as much indifference as I could command. She shook her head sadly. “We never know where my father is going. It’s always rush and hurry except when we are here at Santa Maria. And there’s no one but the parish priest to flirt with. I tried so hard when we first came here—such a funny little yellow man, just like a monkey. My heart was half broken when Cousin Emma cut me out.” “Cousin Emma”—by whom she indicated the masculine Miss Aston—protested loudly for the second time, and again the talk reverted to Europe. I, however, had two facts which I entered in my notebook directly I went upstairs. And this is the entry that I made: “(1) Joan Fordibras left Dieppe at a moment’s notice. Ergo, her departure was the direct issue of my own. “(2) The General’s yacht put out to sea, but returned when I had left. Ergo, his was not the yacht which I had followed to South Africa.”