"It is the opening wedge—if you go to this, you will be booked for others, that's all," said Max, preparing to say, in a martyrized way, that he would accompany her, if she liked.
"Oh, I knew you would feel that; and so I told her she must really excuse my husband, but that I had no doubt Mr. Cranbrooke would accept with pleasure. You see, Mr. Cranbrooke, what polite inaccuracies you are pledged by friendship to sustain."
"I will go with pleasure," Stephen said, with what Max thought almost unnecessary readiness.
"Bravo!" cried Ethel. "This is the hero's spirit. And so, Max dear, you will have a long day to yourself while I am experimenting in fashionable pleasuring, and Mr. Cranbrooke is representing you in keeping an eye on me."
"You will, of course, be at home to dinner?" said her husband.
"Surely. Unless breezes betray us, and we are driven to support exhausted nature upon hardtack and champagne; for, of course, all of the Claytons' luncheon will be eaten up, and there are no stores aboard a craft like that. Will you order the buckboard for ten, dear? We rendezvous at the boat-wharf. And, as there is no telling when we shall be in, don't trouble to send to meet me. Mr. Cranbrooke and I will pick up a trap to return in."
Max saw them off in the buckboard; and, as Ethel turned at some little distance and looked back at him, where he still stood on the gravel before their vine-wreathed portal, waving her hand with a charming grace, then settling again to a tête-à-tête with Cranbrooke, he felt vaguely resentful at being left behind.
The clear, dazzling atmosphere, the sense of youthful vitality in his being, made him repel the idea of exclusion from any function of the animated world. He almost thought Ethel should have given him a chance to say whether or no he would accompany her. Was it not, upon her part, even a little bit—a very little bit, lacking in proper wifely feeling, to be so prompt in dispensing with his society, to accept that of others for a whole, long, bright summer's day of pleasuring?
This suggestion he put away from him as quickly as it came. He was like a spoiled child, he said to himself, who does not expect to be taken at his word. Ethel well knew his dislike of gossiping groups of idle people; equally well she remembered, no doubt, his frequent requests that she would mingle more with the world, take more pleasure on her own account. And Cranbrooke,—dear old Cranbrooke,—of course he was ready to punish himself by going off on such a party, when it was an opportunity to serve his friend!
So Max put his discontent away, and, mounting his horse, went off alone for a ride half around the island, lunching at Northeast Harbor, and returning, through devious ways, by nightfall.