Restored to healthy enjoyment of all things by his day in the saddle, he turned into the avenue leading to their house, buoyed up by the sweet hope of Ethel returned—Ethel on the watch for him. Already, he saw in fancy the gleam of her jaunty white yachting-costume between the tubs of flowering hydrangeas ranged on either side the walk before their door. The lamps inside—the "home lights," of which she had once fondly spoken to him—were already lighted. She would, perhaps, be worrying at his delay. He quickened his speed, and rode down the avenue to the house at a brisk trot. The groom, who, from the stable, had heard the horse's feet, started up out of the shrubbery to meet him. But there was no other indication of a watch upon the movements of the master of the house.
"Mrs. Pollock has not returned, then?" he asked, conscious of blankness in his tone.
"No, sir; not yet. Our orders were, not to send for her, sir, as there was no knowing when the party would get in."
"Yes, the breeze has pretty much died out since sunset," said Pollock, endeavoring to mask his disappointment by commonplace.
He went indoors; and the house, carefully arranged though it was, with flowers and furniture disposed by expert hands to greet the returning of the master, seemed to him dull and chill. He ordered a cup of tea for himself, and, bending down, put a match to the little fire of birch-wood always kept laid upon the hearth of their picturesque hall sitting-room.
In a moment, the curling wreathes of pale azure that arose upon the pyre of silvery-barked logs was succeeded by a generous flame. The peculiarly sweet flavor of the burning birch was distilled upon the air. Sipping the cup of tea, as he stood in his riding-clothes before the fire, Max felt a consoling warmth invade his members and expand his heart.
"They will be in directly," he said; "and, by George, I shall be as ready for my dinner as they for theirs."
In one corner of the hall stood a tall, slender-necked vase, where he had that morning watched Ethel arranging a sheaf of goldenrod with brown-seeded marsh-grasses,—a combination her touch had made individual and artistic to a striking degree. He recalled how, as she had finished it, she looked around, calling him and Stephen from their newspapers to admire her handiwork. He, the husband, had admired it lazily from his divan of cushions in the corner. Cranbrooke had gone over to stand beside his hostess, and thence they had passed, still in close conversation, out to the grassy terrace above the sea.
Now, why should this recollection awaken in Max Pollock a new sense of the feeling he had been doing his best to dispose of all day? He could not say; but there it was, to prick him with its invisible sting. Then, too, the dinner-hour was past, and he was hungry.
He went out upon the veranda at the rear, and surveyed the expanse of water. Far off, between the electric ball that hung over the wharf of the village, and the point of Bar Island, opposite, he saw a bridge of lights from yachts of all sorts, with which the harbor was now full. He fancied a little moving star of light, that seemed to creep beneath the large ones, might be the Claytons' boat on her return, and, after another interval of watching, called up a wharf authority by telephone, and asked if the Lorelei was in.