Mrs. Newbold's island home never looked more enchanting or enchanted than in this "royal month," and yet it was just at this perfected time that stern fashion decreed she should leave it, and seek for pleasure and relaxation within the narrow limits and confined area of George Newbold's yacht. And Esther, with a courage worthy of a better cause, never dreamed of disputing fashion's mandate, but bore with heroic fortitude the thousand and one restrictions entailed upon her by existence in the Deerhound; for even in that most luxurious schooner her convenience had to suit itself to space.
And so, while the Deerhound lay moored at Newport, and Mrs. Esther entertained and was entertained with almost royal splendour, and the long summer days were given up to feasting and amusement, and the long summer nights to dancing and intrigue, the Folly was deserted, its blinds close drawn, its hospitable doors locked and barred; and the roses came to perfection, and ran riot in their wantonness, showering their petals in such lavish prodigality that the garden paths lay strewn and heaped with the crimson and white of their livery.
Even as in ancient Rome a certain youthful emperor, satiated with every guise of amusement, worn out with pleasure and fulfilled desire, buried the companions of his licentiousness beneath an avalanche of rose-leaves, which, as they fell, became their grave-clothes and their pall.
And have we of to-day no likeness to this pagan Heliogabalus? Do not we bury the best-beloved of our past beneath a cere-cloth, formed of the sweet sentiments of forgetfulness; and, turning from their appealing eyes and sadly accusing faces, enter with fresh zest and renewed enthusiasm upon the untried excitements of the hour? Are we, after two thousand years of Christ's humanity, and the awful lessons of Gethsemane and Golgotha, so much less pagan?
Mrs. Newbold had taken Dick Darling with her in her flitting; she had come to have a very true affection for that somewhat crude young lady, for Esther possessed so much of the alchemist's power as to recognise pure gold when she found it; and also Miss Darling's outspoken admiration for Patricia Hildreth acted as a salve to her disappointed and fruitless projects.
To Dick herself the prospect of three weeks or a month at Newport on board the most perfectly appointed yacht of the squadron, with unlimited license to enjoy the passing hour to the full, was, in her own phraseology, "just too most awfully nailing!" She danced and she flirted, the latter in her own half-boyish fashion. She smoked everybody's cigarettes save her own. She won the ladies' single-handed lawn tennis tournament, and sported the prize—a jewelled racket and ball brooch—with frank delight in her own prowess. She drove Freddy Slade's tandem up and down Bellevue Avenue all one morning, and sailed Jack Howard's microscopic cutter out to the Narrows and back in the afternoon.
She was, indeed, as happy as the day was long; like Browning's 'Duchess,' "she loved whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere." And then, oh, happy thought, were there not more worlds to conquer in the immediate future? Did not visions of New London, Shelter Island, Mount Desert, and the Isle of Shoales stretch out in endless perspective before her? What girl could dare to be otherwise than sublimely happy so long as the sea laughed, and the sun shone, and there were such beneficent factors in the scheme of life and Providence as horses, and dogs, and boats, to say nothing of men and boys, who were but the playthings of existence?
And through all those long, luxurious summer days, Mr. Tremain remained in town, returning a curt negative to all alluring invitations.
He had not seen Mrs. Newbold again after his momentous interview with Mademoiselle Lamien; indeed, he had left the Folly immediately after it, walking into New Brighton, and proving but a sorry companion to John Mainwaring, during their journey to New York.
To tell the truth, he felt himself to be somewhat of a traitor to Esther, in that he had permitted himself to become a traitor to the memory of Patricia. He could not quite forget or put from him Esther's earnest words, Esther's eyes filled with tears, and Esther's undeviating fidelity to the love of his youth; that love from which he had now deliberately and by his own act cut himself off for ever. He knew that to Esther he could only appear as the most weak and vacillating of men; his own words rang too clearly in his ears to allow him for one moment to doubt what her judgment upon his action would be.