"Well, I don't know," he said. "About what?" "Oh, that's absurd!" she exclaimed with a nervous laugh: "Isn't there a Miss Nevin?" "Two or three, I daresay," he conceded. "Miss Persse only mentioned one," she said, looking keenly at the dark silhouette of his figure perched on the iron trellis among the stars. "But she wrote that you could tell us a good deal about _her_." "I can," he allowed serenely; "she's a charming creature." "Sufficiently charming to be charmed by you?" "So I flatter myself," he said. "I don't know even that I wouldn't put it--to be charmed _only_ by me." "Ah, that's too superlative," she sighed derisively. "To be said of any woman? Possibly! You're a woman and you ought to know," he reflected. "But she's the sort of woman one says rather more of than one ought." "And rather more to than one ought." "Well, yes, perhaps. One forgets, of course; but I fancy I must have said a good deal." "She could listen to a good deal, no doubt," said Ethel Vernon slowly. "She could listen absorbingly," he replied with ardour. "And you said all you knew?" "Heaven pity a poor woman! no! You forget my attainments. I said all that I was hopelessly ignorant of. That proved infinitely more attractive." "I daresay it did," she agreed shortly. "Your ignorance of what you shouldn't say to a woman is past belief." "I don't think it passed hers," he said pensively. "She hasn't your capacity for distrust." "She'll acquire it," returned the other drily. "And what do you do in that sort of place? I heard you sailed with her." "I sailed with her, I sat with her, I supped with her! The brother was obligingly occupied, and preoccupied, with the estate--which yields about half what it costs him--and so she had to look after me." "Which wasn't difficult?" "Simplicity itself," he smiled. "She had to look such a very little way; I was never out of her sight." "Idyllic!" "It was. We sailed from the hour the mists lifted till the moon rose to show us home. Or we sat together on little beaches with only the wide seas in sight." "Where she made love to you?" "Where she made love to me. On a strand of fairy shells, with a sapphire pool beside us and her little arm about my neck." Ethel Vernon laughed. "You're about the only man I know who would have told her to remove it." "I didn't tell her to remove it. I abandoned myself to the situation. You didn't ask, by the way, if she were pretty." "No, I heard that you had stayed there for a fortnight." Caragh chuckled. "A very sage deduction," he replied. "Well, she is pretty, though you mightn't think so. It's the sort of prettiness that tempts you in." "That tempts you in?" she questioned irritably.