"Yes, Miss Litchfield, that is an excellent idea of yours. I will order the boats out, and if the company are willing we will row over and land."
The Hon. Jerry goes rapidly away to give the order. Dolores is sitting in a camp chair on the deck of the Hon. Jerry's yacht, a scarlet shawl thrown lightly over her pretty shoulders. The yacht has glided into one of the most charming inlets of beautiful scenery Dolores' eyes have seen since her return from abroad.
"Are we to really go on shore?" demands Rea Severn, lifting for a moment her eyes from the crazy cushion she is engaged in making. She has been industriously at work, with her eyes fixed most devoutly on the silks and crewels, but her ears have heard every word Dolores and the Hon. Jerry have spoken for the last twenty minutes.
"I believe so," Dolores answers absently. She is busy gazing dreamily across the deep, blue, shining, sparkling, rippling waters.
"Come, ladies, let us be up and doing; the boats are ready."
Gordon Aubrey flings overboard the cigar he has been smoking, and a general move is made. Rea Severn hastily tosses aside her work, and puts on the hat her maid has brought. Rea, Dolores, Mrs. St. James, Gordon Aubrey, the Hon. Jerry, Ned Crane, and Florrie Silverstone depart. The other members of the party are either too lazy, or have something to do more pleasing to their minds than going to explore a place which would in all probability be "abounding in snakes, bugs, and other venomous reptiles," as old Lady Streathmere observed when she was told of the intended expedition. Lord Streathmere would have gone too, and been only too happy, especially as Dolores went, for poor Lord Streathmere was very severely smitten with pretty, gentle Dolores; but unfortunately for him he had gone on the tug boat to view a wrecked steamer some five or six miles away.
Ned Crane whispered, as he took his accustomed place by Dolores' side, "that he was just as glad Streathmere could not come, as there was no room for him in the boat." Mrs. St. James smiles languidly, endeavoring now and then to stem the current of squabbling going on between Florrie Silverstone and Gordon Aubrey. They never agree; so at last Arial gives the attempt up in despair, and turns her attention to Ned and Dolores. When at length the boat grates on the beach, three little children, with bare feet, are building castles in the sand. They are well dressed children, probably boarding here for the summer months. They gaze in wide eyed wonder at the boat and her occupants; evidently they are not accustomed to have their sandy domains intruded upon by strangers. The eldest, a girl of eight or nine, accosted Gordon Aubrey.
"Have you come to have your fortune told?" she asked sharply.
"Will you do me the honor to tell me mine?" he answered with all due respect to the oracle. She looked him over critically, from the toe of his trim shoe to the top of his jaunty sailor hat.
"People like you, with only one eye, and the other one glass, can't have much to be told, I know," the tiny maid replies, looking at him from under her big shady hat.