CHAPTER XI
THE DYING GLADIATOR
She was waiting, when Armitage, who was leaning back in his seat in the most professional manner, shut off power under the porte cochère and glanced at her for directions.
"To Mrs. Van Valkenberg's," she said. "Do you know where she lives?"
"No, I don't, Miss Wellington."
"No matter, I 'll direct you."
As they entered the Ocean Drive through an archway of privet, Miss Wellington indicated a road which dived among the hills and disappeared.
"Drive quite slowly," she said.
It was a beautiful road, dipping and rising, but hidden at all times by hills, resplendent with black and yellow and purple gorse, or great gray bowlders, so that impressions of Scotch moorlands alternated with those of an Arizona desert. The tang of September was in the breeze; from the moorlands which overlooked the jagged Brenton reefs came the faint aroma of burning sedge; from the wet distant cliff a saline exhalation was wafted. It was such a morning as one can see and feel only on the island of Newport.
As an additional charm to Anne Wellington, there was the tone of time about it all. From childhood she had absorbed all these impressions of late Summer in Newport; they had grown, so to speak, into her life, had become a part of her nature. She drew a deep breath and leaned forward.