the hotel, buy the proper stamps at the office, carefully affix them and put the letters into the box. She was to pay for the stamps, not have them put on the bill—a preference for which Mrs. Pallant gave her reasons. I had bought some at Stresa that morning and I was on the point of offering them, when, apparently having guessed my intention, the elder lady silenced me with a look. Linda told her she had no money and she fumbled in her pocket for a franc. When she had found it and the girl had taken it Linda kissed her before going off with the letters.
'Darling mother, you haven't any too many of them, have you?' she murmured; and she gave me, sidelong, as she left us, the prettiest half comical, half pitiful smile.
'She's amazing—she's amazing,' said Mrs. Pallant, as we looked at each other.
'Does she know what you have done?'
'She knows I have done something and she is making up her mind what it is—or she will in the course of the next twenty-four hours, if your nephew doesn't come back. I think I can promise you he won't.'
'And won't she ask you?'
'Never!'
'Shall you not tell her? Can you sit down together in this summer-house, this divine day, with such a dreadful thing as that between you?'
'Don't you remember what I told you about our relations—that everything was implied between us and nothing expressed? The ideas we have had in common—our perpetual worldliness, our always looking out for chances—are not the sort of thing
