“How haggard everybody is!  Rose, dear, you look almost intellectual,” said Blanche Masterman.

“I hope not,” said Rose, simply.  “Sunrises are very trying.  Look how that pink regularly puts out Mrs. Brown-Robinson, hair and all!”

“The angels,” said the Count de Nugat, with a polite gesture toward the sky, “must have find these celestial combinations very bad for the toilette.”

“They’re safe in white,—­except when they sit for their pictures in Venice,” said Blanche.  “How fresh Mr. Islington looks!  It’s really uncomplimentary to us.”

“I suppose the sun recognizes in me no rival,” said the young man, demurely.  “But,” he added, “I have lived much in the open air, and require very little sleep.”

“How delightful!” said Mrs. Brown-Robinson, in a low, enthusiastic voice and a manner that held the glowing sentiment of sixteen and the practical experiences of thirty-two in dangerous combination;—­“how perfectly delightful!  What sunrises you must have seen, and in such wild, romantic places!  How I envy you!  My nephew was a classmate of yours, and has often repeated to me those charming stories you tell of your adventures.  Won’t you tell some now?  Do!  How you must tire of us and this artificial life here, so frightfully artificial, you know” (in a confidential whisper); “and then to think of the days when you roamed the great West with the Indians, and the bisons, and the grizzly bears!  Of course, you have seen grizzly bears and bisons?”

“Of course he has, dear,” said Blanche, a little pettishly, throwing a cloak over her shoulders, and seizing her chaperon by the arm; “his earliest infancy was soothed by bisons, and he proudly points to the grizzly bear as the playmate of his youth.  Come with me, and I’ll tell you all about it.  How good it is of you,” she added, sotto voce, to Islington, as he stood by the carriage,—­“how perfectly good it is of you to be like those animals you tell us of, and not know your full power.  Think, with your experiences and our credulity, what stories you might tell!  And you are going to walk?  Good night, then.”  A slim, gloved hand was frankly extended from the window, and the next moment the carriage rolled away.

“Isn’t Islington throwing away a chance there?” said Captain Merwin, on the veranda.

“Perhaps he couldn’t stand my lovely aunt’s superadded presence.  But then, he’s the guest of Blanche’s father, and I dare say they see enough of each other as it is.”

“But isn’t it a rather dangerous situation?”

“For him, perhaps; although he’s awfully old, and very queer.  For her, with an experience that takes in all the available men in both hemispheres, ending with Nugat over there, I should say a man more or less wouldn’t affect her much, anyway.  Of course,” he laughed, “these are the accents of bitterness.  But that was last year.”