It was an ideal day for a picnic. The sun shone brilliantly down on Palm Beach, making it look like an enchanted land. The bathers were out in full force. A little farther up the beach countless flower-trimmed hats and many-hued parasols made gorgeous blots of color along the white sands. Overhead the sky was an intense blue, and the water reflected the blueness in its depths.
“You can never understand how happy this makes me,” declared the countess, bestowing an enchanting smile upon the little company. “Mr. Stuart, we thank you for the many pleasures you have given Cousine and me. Someday I hope I may be able to do something for you.”
“Wait until the picnic is over before you thank me, Countess,” replied her host. “The fishing may bore you, especially if the fish don’t bite.”
“Ah, well,” laughed the countess, “I could fish patiently all day, under a sky like this without complaining, if I were to catch nothing but a minnow.”
Mr. Stuart’s fishing party had made an early start. They were to land some miles up the coast, where those who were not of a mind to fish could make themselves comfortable on shore.
The journey was not a short one. It was well past eleven o’clock when they landed on a hard shell beach, broken here and there by patches of marsh grass.
“You are especially privileged to be allowed to set foot on these shores,” Mr. Stuart assured his guests, as he handed them out of the launch. “The location of this place has been kept a secret; otherwise it would be overrun with tourists and excursionists.”
“Is it so beautiful?” Ruth inquired.
“Wait until you see it!” was Mr. Stuart’s reply.
The beach sloped upward so as to form a wall that completely hid the land behind it from view.