Wherever they had been, in town or in the country, in Paris, in Cairo, in Nice, there always had been plenty of people about to do all the disagreeable and difficult things for them, and to do them willingly, because not only had the two ladies paid well for all services rendered them, but they were polite, kind and appreciative.
And now, with a jolt and a jar, that smooth-moving existence had stopped. Their lawyer, who had had complete charge of their nice little fortune inherited from their father, had either done something terrible, or something terrible had happened to him. They preferred, in charity, to believe the latter, and anyhow, it did not matter.
The money had dwindled down to almost nothing, the flat was sublet, the farm rented, and the poor ladies had taken this beach bungalow on Staten Island for the summer. They took it because it was cheap, and because it was their tradition that one had to leave the city in the summer, and because they hoped in this obscure little place to be let alone, to get accustomed to their new life in peace.
So here they were in their new home, all paid for, all furnished, all ready for them to begin living in. It was certainly quiet enough, yet somehow it did not impress Mrs. De Haaven as being peaceful; on the contrary, there was something alarming, almost terrible, in the quietness.
Nobody was doing anything or preparing anything for them; nothing would be done until she and Rose did it; the house simply stood there, waiting for them to begin. How did one begin?
She was a little shocked with Rose for turning her back on the house and sitting down on the veranda railing.
“Oh, Rose!” she said. “Shouldn’t we set to work—get things in order?[Pg 386]”
But Rose only reached out and caught her sister by the arm and pulled her down beside her.
“Look, darling!” she remarked. “That is something, isn’t it?”
“That” was the sea before them—the North Atlantic, which rolled into the bay and broke upon the sands. They had looked upon the Pacific, upon the blue Mediterranean; they had seen many harbors, many beaches, beyond comparison lovelier than this flat shore.