The three of them lay staring at the swell which was steadily growing heavier.  Both men had covered themselves with rugs, after dutifully bundling up Miss Julia.  As I walked back and forth on the deck, I was struck by their various degrees of in-expressiveness.  Opaque brown eyes, almond-shaped and only half open; wolfish green eyes, close-set and always doing something, with a crooked gleam boring in this direction or in that; watery grey eyes, like the thick edges of broken skylight glass:  I would have given a great deal to know what was going on behind each pair of them.

These three were sitting there in a row because they were all woven into the pattern of one large and rather splendid life.  Each had a bond, and each had a grievance.  If they could have their will, what would they do with the generous, credulous creature who nourished them, I wondered?  How deep a humiliation would each egotism exact?  They would scarcely have harmed her in fortune or in person (though I think Miss Julia looked forward to the day when Cressida would “break” and could be mourned over),—­but the fire at which she warmed herself, the little secret hope,—­the illusion, ridiculous or sublime, which kept her going,—­that they would have stamped out on the instant, with the whole Garnet pack behind them to make extinction sure.  All, except, perhaps, Miletus Poppas.  He was a vulture of the vulture race, and he had the beak of one.  But I always felt that if ever he had her thus at his mercy,—­if ever he came upon the softness that was hidden under so much hardness, the warm credulity under a life so dated and scheduled and “reported” and generally exposed,—­he would hold his hand and spare.

The weather grew steadily rougher.  Miss Julia at last plucked Poppas by the sleeve and indicated that she wished to be released from her wrappings.  When she disappeared, there seemed to be every reason to hope that she might be off the scene for awhile.  As Cressida said, if she had not brought Julia, she would have had to bring Georgie, or some other Garnet.  Cressida’s family was like that of the unpopular Prince of Wales, of whom, when he died, some wag wrote: 

If it had been his brother,
Better him than another. 
If it had been his sister,
No one would have missed her.

Miss Julia was dampening enough, but Miss Georgie was aggressive and intrusive.  She was out to prove to the world, and more especially to Ohio, that all the Garnets were as like Cressida as two peas.  Both sisters were club-women, social service workers, and directors in musical societies, and they were continually travelling up and down the Middle West to preside at meetings or to deliver addresses.  They reminded one of two sombre, bumping electrics, rolling about with no visible means of locomotion, always running out of power and lying beached in some inconvenient spot until they received a check or a suggestion from Cressy.  I was only too well acquainted