In June she left the Lick House for the country place in the Santa Clara Valley that Black Dan had taken for her. This was the estate of Tres Pinos, one of the show places of the great valley, recently thrown upon the market by the death of its owner.
Tres Pinos soon became the focusing point of the region’s summer life. The wide balconies were constantly filled with visitors, the velvet turf of the croquet grounds was swept by the crisp flounces of women’s dresses, the bedrooms in the big house were always occupied. Mrs. Campbell, precise, darkly clad, and primly well-bred, presided with an all-seeing eye, astonishing the Californians by her rigid observance of the smaller conventionalities. Through all Mercedes flitted, clad in French dresses, more ornate and elegant than any ever seen before in California, a smilingly gracious and finished person, evoking fear and jealousy in her own sex, and eliciting a rather awed admiration from the other.
That Lionel Narrower was a constant visitor at Tres Pinos the gossips were quick to note. When the young man announced his intention of spending the summer in California it seemed to them that there was no more doubt as to the state of his feelings. What they did not know was that his presence at Tres Pinos was evoked by a constant flutter of scented notes from the chatelaine. There were many times when he had refused the invitations with which Miss Gracey showered him. He had found California, its scenery and people, of so much interest, that a single segregated interest in one particular human being had had no time to develop in him. But Mercedes did not think this. She felt quite sure that Lionel Harrower was remaining in California because of an engrossing and unconquerable sentiment for her.
One Sunday, late in June, he made one of the party which was spending the week-end at Tres Pinos. In the warm middle of the Sabbath afternoon, her visitors scattered over the croquet ground or enjoying the siesta in the shuttered gloom of their bed chambers, Mercedes started out to find him. She slipped down the wide staircase, peeped into the dim drawing-room, cooled by closed blinds and filled with the scent of cut flowers, and then slipped out on to the balcony.
A spiral of cigarette smoke rising from a steamer chair betrayed his presence. He was comfortably outstretched in loose-jointed ease, a novel raised before a pair of eyes which looked suspiciously sleepy, his cigarette caught between his lips. At the sound of her voice he sprang up, but she motioned him back into his chair, and sitting down opposite began to rally him on his laziness. He looked at her with drowsy good humor, his lids drooping. Her figure in its pale colored muslin dress was thrown out against a background of velvety lawns and the massed, juicy greens of summer shrubbery. It was the middle of the afternoon, hot and still. From the croquet ground came the soft, occasional striking of balls.
“Just listen to them,” said the young man, “they’re actually playing croquet!”
“Lots of people play croquet on Sunday,” said Mercedes with some haste, as she disliked to have it thought that she was ignorant of any intricacy of etiquette. “I don’t see anything wrong in it.”
“It’s not the Sunday part of it. It’s the energy. Fancy standing out in that sun of your own free will!”
“You’re horribly lazy,” said the young girl. “It’s your worst fault. You do nothing all day but lie about on the balcony and drink lemonade.”
“I could drink beer,” said Harrower dreamily, “but I’ve never seen anything but lemonade.”