-muffled way.

It was so late that there was no time for normal conversation between
their arrival at the hotel and their retirement to bed. But Hirst
wandered into Hewet's room with a collar in his hand.

"Well, Hewet," he remarked, on the crest of a gigantic yawn, "that was a
great success, I consider." He yawned. "But take care you're not landed
with that young woman. . . . I don't really like young women. . . ."

Hewet was too much drugged by hours in the open air to make any reply.
In fact every one of the party was sound asleep within ten minutes or
so of each other, with the exception of Susan Warrington. She lay for
a considerable time looking blankly at the wall opposite, her hands
clasped above her heart, and her light burning by her side. All
articulate thought had long ago deserted her; her heart seemed to have
grown to the size of a sun, and to illuminate her entire body, shedding
like the sun a steady tide of warmth.

"I'm happy, I'm happy, I'm happy," she repeated. "I love every one. I'm
happy."

Chapter XII

When Susan's engagement had been approved at home, and made public to
any one who took an interest in it at the hotel--and by this time the
society at the hotel was divided so as to point to invisible chalk-marks
such as Mr. Hirst had described, the news was felt to justify some
celebration--an expedition? That had been done already. A dance then.
The advantage of a dance was that it abolished one of those long
evenings which were apt to become tedious and lead to absurdly early
hours in spite of bridge.

Two or three people standing under the erect body of the stuffed leopard
in the hall very soon had the matter decided. Evelyn slid a pace or two
this way and that, and pronounced that the floor was excellent.
Signor Rodriguez informed them of an old Spaniard who fiddled at
weddings--fiddled so as to make a tortoise waltz; and his daughter,
although endowed with eyes as black as coal-scuttles, had the same
power over the piano. If there were any so sick or so surly as to prefer
sedentary occupations on the night in question to spinning and watching
others spin, the drawing-room and billiard-room were theirs. Hewet made
it his business to conciliate the outsiders as much as possible. To
Hirst's theory of the invisible chalk-marks he would pay no attention
whatever. He was treated to a snub or two, but, in reward, found obscure
lonely gentlemen delighted to have this opportunity of ta