Eweretta was seated on a deck-chair near the bandstand. She was wearing a white serge costume and a big white hat, which set off her dark beauty and wonderful complexion. The sea air had given color to her otherwise pale face. She looked almost out of place with her uncouth companion.
Phyllis, who had already caught sight of her in the garden of the White House, was amazed at the change in her.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” she whispered to Mrs. Barrimore, “if Philip falls in love with her, as she is so like Eweretta.”
“Ah, no!” said the mother. “Philip will remain faithful. Moreover, that poor girl ought never to marry anyone. She may any time fall back into her former condition.”
It was the morning following this evening that Philip received a note, delivered by Pierre, which a good deal surprised him. It was from Thomas Alvin, expressing regret at the manner in which he had received Philip, the day he had been so kind as to call. It told him, too, a fact Philip had already heard, that Miss Le Breton (by which name he, of course, called Eweretta) had made a complete recovery.
Thomas Alvin, in his new-born affection for his niece, had conceived the idea of giving her another chance to win back her lover by letting the young people meet again, and this letter was a preliminary move in the game.
As for the intimacy between Philip and Miss Lane, which everyone was saying was an engagement, Alvin did not trouble himself in the least. Philip belonged to Eweretta. If there was any stealing away of a lover, then Miss Lane was the thief. If Philip should once more love Eweretta—though he believed her to be Aimée—then much of the wrong inflicted upon the girl would be undone.
But Eweretta Alvin knew nothing of all this.
Eweretta’s attitude after that interview with her uncle in which she had capitulated had been one of extreme reserve—on the one point, at least. Alvin could not understand her. The women he had known had loudly proclaimed their griefs. Eweretta herself had had more than one hysterical outbreak at the time when drugs were constantly given to her. But Eweretta without the drugs was a very different person.
Alvin had scarcely seen her up to the time of her father’s death, and knew nothing of her natural characteristics. He concluded that as she was certainly not an Alvin, she must take after her mother’s family. He had never even seen Eweretta’s mother. But he had heard that she was a woman of great refinement and reserve. He had heard, too, that knowing her husband’s infidelity, she had never opened her lips upon the subject, but had quietly and silently died.