"I'm sure," Mrs. Hastings had continued plaintively, "neither he nor I ever thought that I would be playing chess up on top of a volcano in the middle of the ocean. It's this awful feeling," Mrs. Hastings had cried querulously, "of being neither on earth nor under the water nor in Heaven that I object to. And nobody can get to us."
"That's just it, Mrs. Hastings," Antoinette had observed earnestly at this juncture.
"Um," said Mr. Frothingham, then, "not at all, not at all. We have all the advantages of the grave and none of its discomforts."
Whereupon Antoinette, rising suddenly, had slipped out of the white marble room altogether and had found the knight smoking in loneliness on the very veranda.
Amory put his cap under his arm and bowed.
"I hope," he said, "that I haven't frightened you."
He was an American! Antoinette's little heart leaped.
"I am having to wait here for a bit," explained Amory, not without vagueness.
Miss Frothingham advanced to the veranda rail and contrived a shy scrutiny of the intruder.
"No," she said, "you didn't frighten me in the least, of course. But—do you usually do your waiting at this altitude?"