arer knew the inner significance of the remark.

At times she was secretly ashamed of her niece, but that esprit de corps
which binds women together prompted her always to defend Millicent. The
only defence at the moment was silence, and an assumed density which did
not deceive Sir John--even she could not do that.

In the meantime Miss Millicent Chyne was walking on the sea-wall at the
end of the garden with Guy Oscard. One of the necessary acquirements of
a modern educational outfit is the power of looking perfectly at home
in a score of different costumes during the year, and, needless to say,
Miss Chyne was finished in this art. The manner in which she wore her
sailor-hat, her blue serge, and her neat brown shoes conveyed to
the onlooker, and especially the male of that species (we cannot
in conscience call them observers), the impression that she was a
yachtswoman born and bred. Her delicate complexion was enhanced by the
faintest suspicion of sunburn and a few exceedingly becoming freckles.
There was a freedom in her movements which had not been observable in
London drawing-rooms. This was Diana-like and in perfect keeping with
the dainty sailor outfit; moreover, nine men out of ten would fail to
attribute the difference to sundry cunning strings within the London
skirt.

"It is sad," Millicent was saying, "to think that we shall have no more
chances of sailing. The wind has quite dropped, that horrid tide is
running, and--this is your last day."

She ended with a little laugh, knowing full well that there was little
sentiment in the big man by her side.

"Really," she went on, "I think I should be able to manage a boat in
time, don't you think so? Please encourage me. I am sure I have tried to
learn."

But he remained persistently grave. She did not like that gravity;
she had met it before in the course of her experiments. One of the
grievances harboured by Miss Millicent Chyne against the opposite sex
was that they could not settle down into a harmless, honest flirtation.
Of course, this could be nothing but a flirtation of the lightest and
most evanescent description. She was engaged to Jack Meredith--poor
Jack, who was working for her, ever so hard, somewhere near the
Equator--and if Guy Oscard did not know this he had only himself to
blame. There were plenty of people ready to tell him. He had only to
ask.

Millicent Chyne, like Guy, was hampered at the outset of life by
theories upon it. Experience,