She signed the letters quickly, stamped them, and placed them on the hall table for Raphael to mail in town. Then she went back to the wicker chair and resolutely adjusted her eyes to the glare on the water.

``My nephews will be coming down,'' she said that evening as Angelina brought her dinner into the dining room, the whole meal on a vast linen covered tray. She looked at the girl speculatively from eyes which had paled with the years; from the early evening lights of them which had first startled Izaak to look at her in an uncousinly way, they had faded to a near absence of color which had, possibly from her constant looking at the water, something of the light of the sea in them.

Angelina placed the tray on the table and with a flick of dark wrist drew off the cloth. She smiled, and the teeth gleamed in her beautifully modeled olive face. ``That will be so nice for you, Mrs. Packard,'' she said. Her voice was ripe and full and her teeth flashed again in Sicilian brilliance before the warm curved lips met and her mouth settled in repose.

``Um,'' said the old lady, and brought her eyes down to the tray. ``You remember them, I suppose?'' She glinted suspiciously at the dish before her: ``Blowfish. I hope Raphael bought them whole.''

Angelina stepped back, her eyes roaming the tray for omissions. Then she looked at the old woman again, her eyes calm.

``Yes,'' she said, ``I remember that they came here every summer. I used to play with the older one sometimes, when he'd let me. Abel?'' The name fell with lazy affectionate remembrance from her lips. For an instant the old aunt felt something indefinable flash through her smile. She would have said triumph. Then Angelina turned and with an easy grace walked toward the kitchen.