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“I had better wait till he asks me,” Kate Theory said. “Dear Milly, if I were to do some of the things you wish me to do, I should shock you very much.”

“I wish he would marry you, then. You know there is very little time, if I wish to see it.”

“You will never see it, Mildred. I don’t see why you should take so for granted that I would accept him.”

“You will never meet a man who has so few disagreeable qualities. He is probably not enormously rich. I don’t know what is the pay of a captain in the navy–“

“It’s a relief to find there is something you don’t know,” Kate Theory broke in.

“But when I am gone,” her sister went on calmly, “when I am gone there will be plenty for both of you.”

The younger sister, at this, was silent for a moment; then she exclaimed, “Mildred, you may be out of health, but I don’t see why you should be dreadful!”

“You know that since we have been leading this life we have seen no one we liked better,” said Milly. When she spoke of the life they were leading–there was always a soft resignation of regret and contempt in the allusion–she meant the southern winters, the foreign climates, the vain experiments, the lonely waitings, the wasted hours, the interminable rains, the bad food, the pottering, humbugging doctors, the damp pensions, the chance encounters, the fitful apparitions, of fellow-travellers.

“Why should n’t you speak for yourself alone? I am glad you like him, Mildred.”

“If you don’t like him, why do you give him orangeade?”

At this inquiry Kate began to laugh, and her sister continued,–

“Of course you are glad I like him, my dear. If I did n’t like him, and you did, it would n’t be satisfactory at all. I can imagine nothing more miserable; I should n’t die in any sort of comfort.”

Kate Theory usually checked this sort of allusion–she was always too late–with a kiss; but on this occasion she added that it was a long time since Mildred had tormented her so much as she had done to-day. “You will make me hate him,” she added.

“Well, that proves you don’t already,” Milly rejoined; and it happened that almost at this moment they saw, in the golden afternoon, Captain Benyon’s boat approaching the steps at the end of the garden. He came that day, and he came two days later, and he came yet once again after an interval equally brief, before Percival Theory arrived, with Mrs. Percival, from Borne. He seemed anxious to crowd into these few days, as he would have said, a good deal of intercourse with the two remarkably nice girls–or nice women, he hardly knew which to call them–whom in the course of a long, idle, rather tedious detention at Naples, he had discovered in the lovely suburb of Posilippo. It was the American consul who had put him into relation with them; the sisters had had to sign, in the consul’s presence, some law-papers, transmitted to them by the man of business who looked after their little property in America, and the kindly functionary, taking advantage of the pretext (Captain Benyon happened to come into the consulate as he was starting, indulgently, to wait upon the ladies) to bring together “two parties” who, as he said, ought to appreciate each other, proposed to his fellow-officer in the service of the United States that he should go with him as witness of the little ceremony. He might, of course, take his clerk, but the captain would do much better; and he represented to Benyon that the Miss Theorys (singular name, wa’ n’t it?) suffered–he was sure–from a lack of society; also that one of them was very sick, that they were real pleasant and extraordinarily refined, and that the sight of a compatriot, literally draped, as it were, in the national banner, would cheer them up more than most anything, and give them a sense of protection. They had talked to the consul about Benyon’s ship, which they could see from their windows, in the distance, at its anchorage. They were the only American ladies then at Naples,–the only residents, at least,–and the captain would n’t be doing the polite thing unless he went to pay them his respects. Benyon felt afresh how little it was in his line to call upon strange women; he was not in the habit of hunting up female acquaintance, or of looking out for the soft emotions which the sex only can inspire. He had his reasons for this abstention, and he seldom relaxed it; but the consul appealed to him on rather strong grounds; and he suffered himself to be persuaded. He was far from regretting, during the first weeks at least, an act which was distinctly inconsistent with his great rule,–that of never exposing himself to the chance of seriously caring for an unmarried woman. He had been obliged to make this rule, and had adhered to it with some success. He was fond of women, but he was forced to restrict himself to superficial sentiments. There was no use tumbling into situations from which the only possible issue was a retreat The step he had taken with regard to poor Miss Theory and her delightful little sister was an exception on which at first he could only congratulate himself. That had been a happy idea of the ruminating old consul; it made Captain Benyon forgive him his hat, his boots, his shirtfront,–a costume which might be considered representative, and the effect of which was to make the observer turn with rapture to a half-naked lazzarone. On either side the acquaintance had helped the time to pass, and the hours he spent at the little pension at Posilippo left a sweet–and by no means innutritive–taste behind.