“Only that Mrs. Hastings has just told me that he is abroad—­in the South Atlantic,” St. George wonderingly replied.

“Why, I am very foolish,” said Miss Holland quickly, “we have not heard from him in ten months now, and I am frightfully worried.  Ah yes, the glass is beautiful.  It was made in one of the South Atlantic islands, I believe—­so were all these things,” she added; “the same figure of the crucified sphinx is on many of them.”

“Do you know what it means?” he asked.

“It is the symbol used by the people in one of the islands, my father said,” she answered.

“These symbols usually, I believe,” volunteered Mr. Frothingham, frowning at the glass, “have little significance, standing merely for the loose barbaric ideas of a loose barbaric nation.”

St. George thought of the ladies of Doctor Johnson’s Amicable Society who walked from the town hall to the Cathedral in Lichfield, “in linen gowns, and each has a stick with an acorn; but for the acorn they could give no reason.”

He looked long at the glass.

“She,” he said finally, “our false mulatto, ought to stand before just such glass.”

Miss Holland laughed.  She nodded her head a little, once, every time she laughed, and St. George was learning to watch for that.

“The glass would suit any style of beauty better than steel bars,” she said lightly as Mrs. Hastings came fluttering back.  Mrs. Hastings fluttered ponderously, as humblebees fly.  Indeed, when one considered, there was really a “blunt-faced bee” look about the woman.

The brougham had on the box two men in smart livery; the footman, closing the door, received St. George’s reply to Mrs. Hastings’ appeal to “tell the man the number of this frightful place.”

“I dare say I haven’t been careful,” Mrs. Hastings kept anxiously observing, “I have been heedless, I dare say.  And I always think that what one must avoid is heedlessness, don’t you think?  Didn’t Napoleon say that if only Caesar had been first in killing the men who wanted to kill him—­something about Pompey’s statue being kept clean.  What was it—­why should they blame Caesar for the condition of the public statues?”

“My dear Mrs. Hastings,” Mr. Frothingham reminded her, his long gloved hands laid trimly along his knees as before, “you are in my care.”

The statue problem faded from the lady’s eyes.

“Poor, dear Mr. Hastings always said you were so admirable at cross-questioning,” she recalled, partly reassured.

“Ah,” cried Miss Holland protestingly, “Aunt Dora, this is an adventure.  We are going to see ‘Tabnit.’”

St. George was silent, ecstatically reviewing the events of the last six hours and thinking unenviously of Amory, rocking somewhere with The Aloha on a mere stretch of green water: 

“If Chillingworth could see me now,” he thought victoriously, as the carriage turned smartly into McDougle Street.