"For mercy's sakes!" cried Cousin Hetty. "I never saw such a family! Elly, what won't you be up to, next? I can't call that a proper thing for a little girl to talk about, right out, so."
"Mother, _you_ tell me," said Elly, looking up into her mother's face with the expression of tranquil trust which was like a visible radiance. Marise always felt scared, she told herself, when Elly looked at her like that. She made a little helpless shrugged gesture of surrender with her shoulders, setting down on the table a plate of cold sliced lamb. "Elly, darling, I can't stop just this minute to tell you about it, and anyhow I don't understand any more about it than Grandmother did. But I don't care if I don't. The first quiet minute we have together, I'll tell you enough so you can understand why _she_ cared."
"All right, when I go to bed tonight I'll remind you to," Elly made the engagement definite. She added, with a shout, "Oh, Mother, _chicken_ sandwiches! Oh, I didn't know we were going to have _chicken_ sandwiches. Mother, can't we begin now? I'm awfully hungry."
"Hello," said Neale, looking back toward the house. "Here comes Eugenia, arisen from her nap. Paul, run back into the house and bring out another chair. Marise, have you explained who Eugenia is?"
"Oh là, là, no!" exclaimed Marise. "I forgot they didn't know her. Quick, you do it, Neale."
"Old friend of my wife's, sort of half-cousin several-times removed, schoolmates in France together, the kind of old family friend who comes and goes in the house at will," said Neale rapidly. "Cultivated, artistic, and so on."
"Oh, _Neale_, how slightingly you put it!" cried Marise under her breath. "She's made herself into one of the rarest and most finished creations!"
Neale went on rapidly, in a low tone as the newcomer stepped slowly down the path, "She toils not, neither does she spin . . . doesn't have to. Highbrow, very, and yet stylish, very! Most unusual combination." He added as final information, "Spinster, by conviction," as he stepped forward to greet her.
The other two men stood up to be presented to the newcomer, who, making everything to Marise's eyes seem rough and countrified, advanced towards them, self-possessed, and indifferent to all those eyes turned on her. In her gleaming, supple dress of satin-like ivory jersey, she looked some tiny, finished, jewel-object, infinitely breakable, at which one ought only to look if it were safely behind glass.
