"I wonder whether you mean what you say, now."
"Of course I don't. Emmeline would tell you that I never mean anything I say."
Dorothea made a little movement of dissent.
"I don't believe that," she said.
"It really is a pretty place,—but ineffably slumberous. I'm there occasionally,—oftener than I wish, and not so often as others will."
"But of course you have a great many friends in the neighbourhood?"
"Acquaintances."
"Not more?"
"Well,—we know the Erskines pretty intimately."
"The Erskines!" A recollection of her father's Christmas card sprang up. "The Erskines—and Craye! Oh, I know now,—it was at Craye, he said they lived."