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 The hostess corroborated. “You must be good children,” she added with playful relief, looking about her table. Her worried expression returned. “Why, there’s an empty place. Who isn’t here?” She roved her eyes in growing alarm. “Some one isn’t here,” she repeated. She had a brief and dreadful vision of having to put back short one guest, of inquest and reporters and headlines, and of floating inert buttocks in some lonely reach of the lake, that would later wash ashore with that mute inopportune implacability of the drowned. The guests stared at one another, then at the vacant place, then at one another again. Mrs. Maurier tried to call a mental roll, staring at each in turn. Presently Miss Jameson said:

“Why, it’s Mark, isn’t it?”

It was Mark. They had forgotten him. Mrs. Maurier dispatched the steward, who found the ghostly poet still at full length on the upper deck. He appeared in his ironed serge, bathing them briefly in his pale gaze.

“You gave us rather a turn, my dear fellow,” Mr. Talliaferro informed him with reproof, taking upon himself the duties of host.

“I wondered how long it would be before some one saw fit to notify me that lunch was ready,” the poet replied with cold dignity, taking his seat.

Fairchild, watching him, said abruptly: “Say, Julius, Mark’s the very man for Major Ayers, ain’t he? Say, Major, here’s a man to take your first bottle. Tell him about your scheme.”

The florid man regarded the poet affably. “Ah, yes. It’s a salts, you see. You spoon a bit of it into your—”

“A what?” asked the poet, poising his spoon and staring at the florid man. The others all poised their tools and stared at the florid man.

“A salts,” he explained. “Like our salts at home, y’know—”