ws.

"Look here!" he cried, with something of the old manner, "it's too
hot for this. We've been talking and interviewing each other all the
morning, and I have another interview this afternoon. I do stipulate for
silence. Let each lady retire to her bedroom with a book."

"I retire to pack," said Harriet. "Please remind Signor Carella, Philip,
that the baby is to be here by half-past eight this evening."

"Oh, certainly, Harriet. I shall make a point of reminding him."

"And order a carriage to take us to the evening train."

"And please," said Miss Abbott, "would you order a carriage for me too?"

"You going?" he exclaimed.

"Of course," she replied, suddenly flushing. "Why not?"

"Why, of course you would be going. Two carriages, then. Two carriages
for the evening train." He looked at his sister hopelessly. "Harriet,
whatever are you up to? We shall never be ready."

"Order my carriage for the evening train," said Harriet, and departed.

"Well, I suppose I shall. And I shall also have my interview with Signor
Carella."

Miss Abbott gave a little sigh.

"But why should you mind? Do you suppose that I shall have the slightest
influence over him?"

"No. But--I can't repeat all that I said in the church. You ought never
to see him again. You ought to bundle Harriet into a carriage, not this
evening, but now, and drive her straight away."

"Perhaps I ought. But it isn't a very big 'ought.' Whatever Harriet and
I do the issue is the same. Why, I can see the splendour of it--even the
humour. Gino sitting up here on the mountain-top with his cub. We come
and ask for it. He welcomes us. We ask for it again. He is equally
pleasant. I'm agreeable to spend the whole week bargaining with him. But
I know that at the end of it I shall descend empty-handed to the
plains. It might be finer of me to make up my mind. But I'm not a fine
character. And nothing hangs on it."

"Perhaps I am extreme," she said humbly. "I've been trying to run you,
just like your mother. I feel you ought to fight it out with Harriet.
Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important
today, and when you say of a thing that 'nothing hangs on it,' it sounds
like blasphemy. There's never any knowing--(how am I to put it?)--which
of our actions, which of our idlenesses won't have things hanging on it
for ever."

He assented, but her remark had only an aesthetic value. He was not
prepared to take it to his heart. All the af