shockingly coquettish and irreverent
and lent to her dignity a flavour of ill-timed waggishness. But it
must be admitted that Mrs. Hastings and everything that she wore
were "_les antipodes des graces_." She was followed by a footman,
his arms filled with parcels, and she sank among them on the divan
and held out her limp, plump hand for a cup of tea. Mrs. Hastings
had the hands that are fettered by little creases at the wrists and
whose wedding rings always seem to be uncomfortably snug. She sat
down, and her former activity dissolved, as it were, into another
sort of energy and became fragments of talk. Mrs. Hastings was like
the old woman in Ovid who sacrificed to the goddess of silence, but
could never keep still; save that Mrs. Hastings did not sacrifice.

"Good morning, Mr. St. George," she said. "I'm sure I've quite
forgotten everything. Olivia dear, I've had all the prescriptions
made up that I've ever taken to Rutledge's, because no one can tell
what the climate will be like, it's so low on the map. I've looked
up the Azores--that's where we get some of our choicest cheese. And
camphor--I've got a pound of camphor. And I must say positively that
I always was against these wars in the far East, because all the
camphor comes from Korea or one of those frightful islands and now
it has gone up twenty-six cents a pound. And then the flaxseed,
Olivia dear. I've got a tin of flaxseed, for no one can tell--"

St. George doubted if she knew when he said good morning, although
she named him Mr. St. John, gave him permission to go to the boat,
hoped in one breath that he would come again to see them, and in the
next that he would send them a copy of whatever the _Sentinel_ might
publish about them, in serene oblivion of the state of the
post-office department in Yaque. Mrs. Hastings, in short, was one of
the women who are thrown into violent mental convulsions by the
prospect of a journey; this was not at all because she was setting
sail specifically for Yaque, for the moment that she saw a porter or
a pier, though she was bound only for the Bronx or Staten Island,
she was affected in the same way.

As Olivia gave St. George her hand he came perilously near telling
her that he would follow her to Yaque; but he reflected that if he
were to tell her at all, he would better do so on the way to the
submarine. So he went blindly down the hall and rang the elevator
bell for so long that the boy deliberately stopped on the f