"To-night the orchestra is playing The Rosary, and I had to get away from all those people in the lounge!
"I have come down here—away from it, as I thought, but, no! Those same high, wailing notes that we heard that first day—that first day—are ringing in my ears this minute.
"How they sob—sob—sob! And over the hours they spent together! That's the foolish part of it! I am sobbing over the hours I might have spent with him—and didn't!
"'Are like a string of pearls to me!'
"Bah! The hours I spent with him wouldn't make pearls enough for a stick-pin—much less a rosary!
"To me Caro Mio Ben is a much more sensible little love plaint! I wonder if he knows it? I wonder if he heard that girl singing in the parlor the night of the Kendalls' dance—and if it still rings—rings—rings in his mind every time he thinks of me? Or if he ever thinks of me at all?"
I have inserted this not so much to show you how very critical my case was, as to demonstrate how valuable a thing is diversion. Without Hilda and the elder Montgomerys I should no doubt have tried to emulate Lady Frances Webb in the feat of writing heart-throbs.
The third day's observation was a distinct improvement.
"The men on shipboard are rather better than the women—just as they are on dry land. True, there are some who have sold Chicago real estate, and are now bent upon spending the rest of their lives running over to Europe to criticize everything that they can not buy. Nothing is sacred to them—until after they have paid duty on it. They revere and caress their own Italian mantlepieces, their cases of majolica, and their collection of Wedgwood—when these are safely decorating their lake-shore homes—but what Europe keeps for herself they scorn.
"'Bah! I don't see anything so swell about St. Mark's—nor St. Doge's either!' I heard one emit this morning. 'But, old man, you just ought to see the champagne glasses I bought last year in Venice. The governor dined with me the other night, and he said——' etc.