e and intent.

"No; I haven't. I clean forgot it."

He went off to write his letter. When he came back Mrs. Tailleur had
risen and was saying good night to Jane.

He followed her to the portiere and drew it back for her to pass. As she
turned to thank him she glanced up at the hand that held the portiere.
It trembled violently. Her eyes, a moment ago dark under her bent
forehead, darted a sudden light sidelong.

She paused, interrogative, expectant. Lucy bowed.

As Mrs. Tailleur passed out she looked back over her shoulder, smiling
again her incomprehensible smile.

The portiere dropped behind her.

CHAPTER V

Five days passed. The Lucys had now been a week at Southbourne. They
knew it well by that time, for bad weather kept them from going very far
beyond it. Jane had found, too, that they had to know some of the
visitors. The little Cliff Hotel brought its guests together with a
geniality unknown to its superb rival, the Metropole. Under its roof, in
bad weather, persons not otherwise incompatible became acquainted with
extraordinary rapidity. People had begun already to select each other.
Even Mr. Soutar, the clergyman, had emerged from his lonely gloom, and
dined by preference at the same table with the middle-aged ladies--the
table farthest from the bay window. The Hankins, out of pure kindness,
had taken pity on the old lady, Mrs. Jurd. They had made advances to
the Lucys, perceiving an agreeable social affinity, and had afterward
drawn back. For the Lucys were using the opportunity of the weather for
cultivating Mrs. Tailleur.

It was not easy, they told themselves, to get to know her. She did not
talk much. But as Jane pointed out to Robert, little things came out,
things that proved that she was all right. Her father was a country
parson, very strait-laced, they gathered; and she had little sisters,
years younger than herself. When she talked at all it was in a pretty,
innocent way, like a child's, and all her little legends were, you could
see, transparently consistent. They had, like a child's, a quite funny
reiterance and simplicity. But, like a child, she was easily put off by
any sort of interruption. When she thought she had let herself go too
far, she would take fright and avoid them for the rest of the day, and
they had to begin all over again with her next time.

The thing, Lucy said, would be for Jane to get her some day all alone.
But Jane said, No; Mrs. Tailleur was ten times mor