Colonel Mapleson shrugged his shoulders.
He was not particularly fond of gay society, and was never anxious to dance attendance upon his fashionable wife, although he was proud of her beauty, and the admiration and attention she received wherever she went.
“I have not been in Newport for a good many years,” he remarked, as he passed his coffee-cup to be filled for the third time; for they were at breakfast.
“Surely you would enjoy the trip then,” Everet replied. “Newport has changed greatly; it has become, literally, an island of palaces. You ought to run up there for a little change during mother’s stay.”
“Well, I’ll think about it; but you will be lonely if I run off just as you come home.”
“Never mind me; mother needs and wants you, and I have been in so much excitement of late that I shall be glad to be quiet for awhile,” the young man remarked, carelessly.
This was such a strange desire on the part of one who had been accustomed to frequent all the gay resorts during the summer holidays, while, too, he was looking far from well or happy, that Colonel Mapleson shot a searching glance into his son’s face, and began to suspect that he had been disappointed in some affair of the heart, and had come home to conceal it.
“That is a new freak, isn’t it?” he asked, quietly.
“You can call it so if you like; but I have been working pretty hard this last year, and am tired. Besides, I have not had a really good chance to fish, hunt, and ride since I entered Yale, and I mean to improve my opportunity now to my heart’s content. By the way,” he continued, after a slight pause, “isn’t there a place called the ‘Hermitage’ somewhere in this vicinity, where a relative of ours, who was a sort of recluse, used to live? In some of my roamings I may like to visit it.”
“Yes; Robert Dale, a distant cousin, built it and lived there for years. I suppose your mother has been telling you about him; she always invested him with a great deal of romance,” his father replied, with a slight smile of amusement. “He was a queer old codger, too, and lived a regular hermit’s life for nearly a quarter of a century. The house is still standing, about ten miles from here, in a lonely spot surrounded by a dense growth of pines. He kept one servant—Uncle Jake, he was called—who was housekeeper and steward all in one—cooking, washing, and ironing, taking care of their one horse and cow, and the chickens. He also attended to all the marketing and errands, and his master was rarely seen.”