with six people in it, Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was arch, Muriel almost hysterically full of giggles, and her fiancé sheepish, as to the necessity of not" dividing " the engaged couple. Under cover of much laughter and facetiousness, James said to Zella, "Sit here, while they're making up their minds, won't you?" and took his stand beside her.
Zella felt a thrill of triumphant gratification, and wondered to herself, with some naïveté, what, if the sight of her had so much impressed James, would be the result of intelligent conversation and ready sympathy.
These qualifications were, accordingly, brought into play as soon as the conversation had become sufficiently general to admit of a low-toned dialogue between Zella and her neighbour.
Nor did James appear to fail in appreciation.
The intellectual affinity between them, which Zella had always suspected to exist, was no longer hindered from displaying itself by gentle reminders from Mrs. Lloyd-Evans that "little people should be seen and not heard," or the inexorable formula, "Jimmy dear, do not try and be clever."
Zella, falling into one of the abstract discussions familiar to Villetswood, was in her element, and the animation of her face and manner caused Chumps, seated opposite to her, to wonder what topic James could have discovered to evoke such lively interest from the bored and absent-minded Miss de Kervoyou, who had responded so stupidly to his own efforts at conversation that afternoon,
"I suppose your cousin is clever, isn't she?" he hazarded in an undertone to Muriel; and Muriel, feeling that it would be disloyal to make any admission so likely to damage Zella's chances of social popularity, replied vaguely:
"Oh, I don't know. She's awfully nice, any way."
It was perhaps as well that their intense absorption in the frequent sound of their own laughter prevented Muriel and her betrothed from suspecting the subject of conversation presently selected by Zella.
"An English engaged couple is a new sight to me," she observed, under cover of an animated appeal from Muriel:
"Now, mother, isn't Chumps perfectly idiotic?" and her lover's instant retort: "No, I'm not, am I?"
In point of fact, an engaged couple of any nationality would have been an equally new sight to Zella; but the old desire to show herself cosmopolitan, and if possible slightly Bohemian, was strong upon her. She was rather disappointed at James's extremely conventional reply:
"They are very happy, which is the main point."
"That is what Aunt Marianne says, and everyone else."
"Well?" he asked, laughing a little in answer to the dissatisfaction in her voice.
"Well, it strikes one as curious that all that ragging and laughing between two quite ordinary people should be symbolic of happiness, that's all."
Zella had been in earnest, but now suddenly recollected her auditor, and added a more or less insincere rider to her remark:
"Of course Muriel is a perfect darling, but he is quite ordinary, I suppose?"
James, who would not improbably have preferred to postpone a discussion of his future brother-in-law until such time as dimensions wider than those of the Lloyd-Evans dinner-table should separate them, replied dispassionately:
"Quite. You are not going to add, I suppose, 'What can she see in him?"
Zella, who had been meditating some such platitude, laughed a little and asked if that was the stock remark.
"One is told that it is, from the bride's relations, and vice versa from the bridegroom's, in cheap satirical novels about Society with a capital S. But I have never met it anywhere else, have you? Certainly not in this case, where every friend and relation either of them possesses is perfectly delighted about it."
"It would be difficult to be more delighted than they are themselves," rather dryly remarked Zella, as fresh peals of delighted laughter proclaimed yet another verbal encounter of wits between the lovers.
"Zella," said James suddenly, "don't you see that it's all a question of proportion. Their capacity for happiness is what it is; neither of them will ask for any more nor wish for it—their measure is full."
His manner was more free from any assumption of superiority than the words might have appeared to warrant.
"You mean that they have realized the highest ideal of human happiness of which either is capable?"
"Something like that. It's just a matter of proportion," repeated James, with an inflexion in his voice that suddenly reminded Zella of the dogmatic schoolboy who had theorized in the schoolroom at Boscombe. "The whole thing will come down to a question of proportion, if you come to think of it—how much one can enjoy, or suffer, or think, or anything. Rottenly put, but I dare say you know what I mean."
"I wonder if it's better to be capable of less rather than of more, emotionally, than other people," said Zella, not wondering in the least, but anxious to inform James that she belonged to the latter category.
"Better to demand less, perhaps, since the Fates are more likely to grant it."
"I don't think it's exactly a question of better or worse. One is as one's made. Those two are rather exceptional, though, for they've got everything they want to make them happy; and I don't fancy many people get that, however modest their demands."
"Perhaps one in every million," said Zella, not averse to a mild display of cynicism on her own account.
"It's different," said James rather irrelevantly, "for those who hitch their waggon to a star."
There was an instant's silence between them, and her curious sureness of intuition prevented Zella from asking the obvious question.
The next moment James laughed.
"As for our turtle-doves' methods of displaying their happiness. you know, I don't expect you to sympathize with it. You aren't the same sort, and simply couldn't be expected to understand."
"Understand what?" said Zella, half flattered at being considered of another, presumably superior, sort, and half piqued at James's supposing that there was anything in the gamut of human nature that she could not understand.
"Why, the way Chumps and Muriel rag one another."
"It is very—English, no doubt," said the descendant of the Kervoyous, with her delicate eyebrows arching in unconscious imitation of the old Baronne.
"It is, very," cheerfully agreed James, rising as Mrs. Lloyd-Evans made a move towards the door.
"As a matter of fact, Muriel and good old Chumps both belong to the type who, if they had been born in rather different surroundings, would have found the most exquisite enjoyment in constantly changing hats with one another."
The aphorism returned to Zella's mind several times during the course of the evening.
From being mildly interested, she became intensely bored at a prolonged and passionate discussion between Muriel and her mother as to the latest additions to the former's trousseau, and stifled yawns so unsuccessfully that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, always a firm believer in the tiring effects of a journey, insisted upon dismissing her to bed at half-past nine.
"Muriel
