"Don't say crude," Edith protested considerately; "say rather that your social life has been undeveloped. Until this new desire for a home came to you the necessity of considering that side had not appealed, and when you once decided to make the grand plunge the only way you knew how to go at it was as if you were selecting a partner in your business.

Perhaps, as you say, the same rules ought to apply, but I a.s.sure you they don't. And that is just where you stand now."

"Then I will learn the rules which do apply," he a.s.serted with determination. "But why, if this is so all-important, have you yourself so little use for society?"

"It is a very different matter, my friend, to make light of something which you have and something which you lack. I may despise society, but if it was society that despised me you'd see me starting a campaign in New York that would make a football game look like a funeral procession."

Cosden regarded his animated companion for some moments in silence, but any one who knew him would have recognized that his mind had seized upon the germ of a new idea which pleased him, but which he was considering critically for the moment.

"Look here," he said suddenly. "It doesn't take me long to make up my mind. Why couldn't I persuade you to start a campaign like that for me--for us--in Boston?"

The abruptness of the suggestion, and the complete change from the subdued and humiliated seeker after light back to the dominating man of affairs who forces the solution of his dilemma, took even the astute Edith by surprise.

"Am I by any chance to consider that as an offer of marriage?" she demanded.

"That is just what I mean. What do you say?"

"Well, of all things!" She rose to her feet and walked up and down the piazza with Cosden following close behind. It was a moment or two before she recovered herself, and then she turned on him.

"I take back all the sympathy I ever gave you," she cried indignantly, "and I hate myself for having tried to help you with my advice."

Cosden regarded her outbreak with consternation. "I always supposed an offer of marriage was the greatest compliment a man could pay a woman,"

he exclaimed surprised.

"It is no compliment when such an offer is based so cold-bloodedly upon business advantage. You come down here to get a wife, which you have decided in your counting-room will increase your a.s.sets. The first girl you select doesn't fit into your plans, as you had expected, so you look me over critically, tell me it doesn't take you long to make up your mind, and offer me a partnership.--All that remains, I suppose, is for us to discuss office hours and the division of the profits! My word! You are the most mercenary human creature I ever met!"

Edith was splendid in her anger, but Cosden refused to take her seriously.

"Come," he insisted; "you are far too sensible to look at it that way.

Why, every one in the hotel is asking if we are engaged. What shall I tell them?"

"Tell them you proposed to me and that I refused you," she retorted defiantly, turning from him and disappearing through the open door.

XIX

"Well Marian, my play-time is over for the present," Thatcher remarked as he folded a cable he had just received and placed it in his pocket.

"They need me at the office, so I'll sail on Monday. There's no reason for you to leave until later unless you wish to."

She looked up at him with an expression of such real disappointment that he felt the unspoken reproach.

"We have stayed a month longer than we intended, as it is," he explained, "and my going need not hasten your plans at all."

"I don't want you to return alone, Harry, and I loathe the thought of turning my back on this enchanting spot. Truly, each day makes it more difficult to leave it."

"Then if you don't go at once the problem may become serious," he laughed.

"You are so different down here, Harry, I hate to give you up to business again. That is a wife's real rival; I'm jealous of it."

"A rival which has made our pleasures possible, so you should be friends. Only a few years more of it, little woman, and then you may plan my days as well as yours. Then we'll have one long play-time together."

"You've been saying that for five years," she protested petulantly; "but we seem to come no nearer. Haven't we enough to do that now?"

"Who shall say what 'enough' really is?" he smiled, taking her hand in his and looking with affection into her deep eyes. "That isn't what holds me; it takes time to work out of the old interests without serious loss, Marian, and present conditions aren't helpful."

"I suppose not," she agreed unwillingly; "but do make the period of waiting as short as possible. Merry and Philip are grown now, and I'm hungry for another honeymoon, such as we have been having here."

"Some day, little woman, some day!"

"Don't say that, Harry!" she protested again, this time more vigorously.

"There is no expression in the English language I detest so much as 'some day.' When I was a little girl I had an uncle who was forever going to take me somewhere or give me something 'some day'; and 'some day' never came! I've always looked upon those two words as a diabolical combination invented by older people as an aggravation to children. But I will be patient, Harry. Can't you start in now to take some medicine which will be sure to clear your blood of business by the time these things you speak of work themselves out?"

"If present conditions continue," he laughed, "they will accomplish what you wish better than anything so homeopathic as physic. We shall all be thrown out of business whether we like it or not. This cable I have just received," he continued more soberly, "is a case in point: the government is starting in to 'investigate' one of our pet interests, and the stock has begun to drop out of sight already. It is paternalism with a vengeance: protecting the infant industries to encourage their growth, and then spanking them when they respond!"

"Well," Marian sighed, "it's all Greek to me, but if you say it's wrong then I know it is. Now," she added, slipping her arm through his, "let's go over to the pool and see what is going on there."

Shouts of laughter and sounds of splashing greeted them as they reached the top of the tiled steps of the "Princess" pool, and they paused for a moment to see the finish of an exciting race.

"You're too fast for us, Miss Merry," Huntington acknowledged his defeat. Then he turned to Cosden who finished just behind him.

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself to let a girl beat you like that, Connie?" he demanded.

"How about yourself?" was the retort; "you always claimed to be some swimmer."

"You let me win!" Merry declared.

"Indeed I didn't," Huntington protested stoutly. "It is eminently unfit that woman should defeat man in any athletic contest; she has beaten us out in everything else, and we must reserve something. Perhaps Connie let you beat him,--did you, Connie?"

Cosden laughed consciously. "Did I ever let any one beat me in anything when I could prevent it?" he asked.

"There you are," Huntington waved his arms dramatically. "We admit ourselves temporarily defeated, but not disgraced. As for myself, I shall immediately go into strict training, in an endeavor to alter my lines from endurance to speed."

The Thatchers strolled along the edge of the pool and seated themselves on one of the benches at the farther end of the enclosure.

"Here come Edith and Philip Hamlen," Marian called her husband's attention to the new arrivals; "where do you suppose she found him?"

"h.e.l.lo, people," Edith greeted them. "Mr. Hamlen has been waiting for you in the hotel, and I told him I thought we should find you here. This looks to me like a perfectly good party."

"Come sit with us," Thatcher urged, drawing up another bench. "We elderly folk will watch the children at play."

Edith suddenly caught sight of Cosden and she perceptibly stiffened.

"Children!" she echoed, with an inflection of her voice and a toss of the head which attracted Marian's attention. "How is it that Mr. Cosden goes into the water? I should think he would be afraid of rust."