Burton had been in Washington for two days; it was Tuesday evening now and his business was at last completed. He had earned a vacation, he told himself, and he meant to take it. Washington was maintaining its reputation for torridness, and when at the lunch-table an acquaintance had pictured a mile of cool green waves breaking on the shingle at Virginia Beach and had likened the sea-breezes there to a million electric fans, Burton had made up his mind on the instant. He would take the night boat for Hampton and spend the morrow by salt water; the thought of cleaving his way through gurgling, hissing combers was so enticing that the rest of the hot, humid afternoon was almost endurable.
He took the little steamer after dinner, just as the weary sun was sinking back of the miles of parched brick and fetid asphalt. He was tired, and he meant to go to bed early, but the deck was comparatively cool and the little box-like state-room was incomparably hot, and so darkness found him still smoking with his feet on the rail. Near at hand two men were talking lazily, but he gave them no heed until one said:
“Belle Harbour? Yes, over there where you see the lights. We stop there. Say, have you ever been there? Well, of all——”
Burton listened no longer. Belle Harbour—the Enchanted Garden—and Kitty! How long ago it all seemed, to be sure! And yet the mere mention of the sleepy old town set his heart a-racing and the memory of the girl amidst the roses still never failed to bring a frown to his brow and a queer little ache to his breast. It was June once more, he thought, and the garden would be gay and fragrant with the waving blooms, but Kitty——
He dropped his feet from the rail and sat up suddenly in his deck chair. But would Kitty be absent? Wasn’t it far more probable that she would be at home, there in the garden, now that rose-time had come? It was a long cry from Algiers to Virginia, and yet, as he gazed across the dark water to the few scattered lights, he felt certain that the girl he loved was there.
Only twice since she had gone abroad had he had tidings of her, though he had searched the foreign pages diligently. Once her name was among a list of persons who had registered at the Herald Bureau in Paris: that was in September. In January the paper had mentioned Colonel Simpson Barrett as having been a guest at a Government function given in Algiers to a visiting potentate. That was all. He had instructed Mrs. Phillips to advise him the instant the Colonel and his niece returned to Mary Street, but such advice had never come. And yet—and yet something seemed to tell him that Kitty was back among the roses, that the Castle once more held the Princess!