From the landing on a still morning in late July, Mrs. Drelmer surveyed the fleet of sailing and steam yachts at anchor in Newport harbour. She was beautifully and expensively gowned in nun's grey chiffon; her toque was of chiffon and lace, and she held a pale grey parasol, its ivory handle studded with sapphires. She fixed a gla.s.s upon one of the white, sharp-nosed steam yachts that rode in the distance near Goat Island.

"Can you tell me if that's the _Viluca?_" she asked a sailor landing from a dinghy, "that boat just astern of the big schooner?"

"No ma'am; that's the _Alta_, Commodore Weckford."

"Looking for some one?" inquired a voice, and she turned to greet Fred Milbrey descending the steps.

"Oh! Good-morning! yes; but they've not come in, evidently. It's the _Viluca_--Mr. Bines, you know; he's bringing his sister back to me. And you?"

"I'm expecting the folks on Shepler's craft. Been out two weeks now, and were to have come down from New London last night. They're not in sight either. Perhaps the gale last night kept them back."

Mrs. Drelmer glanced above to where some one seemed to be waiting for him.

"Who's your perfectly gorgeous companion? You've been so devoted to her for three days that you've hardly bowed to old friends. Don't you want her to know any one?"

The young man laughed with an air of great shrewdness.

"Come, now, Mrs. Drelmer, you're too good a friend of Mauburn's--about his marrying, I mean. You fixed him to tackle me low the very first half of one game we know about, right when I was making a fine run down the field, too. I'm going to have better interference this time."

"Silly! Your chances are quite as good as his there this moment."

"You may think so; I know better."

"And of course, in any other affair, I'd never think of--"

"P'r'aps so; but I'd rather not chance it just yet."

"But who is she? What a magnificent mop of hair. It's like that rich piece of ore Mr. Bines showed us, with copper and gold in it."

"Well, I don't mind telling you she's the widow of a Southern gentleman, Colonel Brench Wybert."

"Ah, indeed! I did notice that two-inch band of black at the bottom of her accordeon-plaited petticoat. I'll wager that's a _Rue de la Paix_ idea of mourning for one's dead husband. And she confides her grief to the world with such charming discretion. Half the New York women can't hold their skirts up as daintily as she does it. I dare say, now, her tears could be dried?--by the right comforter?"

Milbrey looked important.

"And I don't mind telling you the late Colonel Brench Wybert left her a fortune made in Montana copper. Can't say how much, but two weeks ago she asked the governor's advice about where to put a spare million and a half in cash. Not so bad, eh?"

"Oh, this new plutocracy! Where _do_ they get it?"

"How old, now, should you say she was?"

Mrs. Drelmer glanced up again at the colour-scheme of heliotrope seated in a victoria upholstered in tan brocade.

"Thirty-five, I should say--about."

"Just twenty-eight."

"Just about what I should say--she'd say."

"Come now, you women can't help it, can you? But you can't deny she's stunning?"

"Indeed I can't! She's a beauty--and, good luck to you. Is that the _Viluca_ coming in? No; it has two stacks; and it's not your people because the _Lotus_ is black. I shall go back to the hotel. Bertie Trafford brought me over on the trolley. I must find him first and do an errand in Thames Street."

At the head of the stairs they parted, Milbrey joining the lady who had waited for him.

Hers was a person to gladden the eye. Her figure, tall and full, was of a graceful and abundant perfection of contours; her face, precisely carved and showing the faintly generous rounding of maturity, was warm in colouring, with dark eyes, well shaded and languorous; her full lips betrayed their beauty in a ready and fascinating laugh; her voice was a rich, warm contralto; and her speech bore just a hint of the soft r-less drawl of the South.

She had blazed into young Milbrey's darkness one night in the palm-room of the Hightower Hotel, escorted by a pleased and beefy youth of his acquaintance, who later told him of their meeting at the American Emba.s.sy in Paris, and who unsuspectingly presented him. Since their meeting the young man had been her abject cavalier. The elder Milbrey, too, had met her at his son's suggestion. He had been as deeply impressed by her helplessness in the matter of a million and a half dollars of idle funds as she had been by his aristocratic bearing and enviable position in New York society.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting. The _Lotus_ hasn't come in sight yet.

Let's loaf over to the beach and have some tall, cold ones."

"Who was your elderly friend?" she asked, as they were driven slowly up the old-fashioned street.

"Oh! that's Joe Drelmer. She's not so old, you know; not a day over forty, Joe can't be; fine old stock; she was a Leydenbroek and her husband's family is one of the very oldest in New York. Awfully exclusive. Down to meet friends, but they'd not shown up, either. That reminds me; they're friends of ours, too, and I must have you meet them. They're from your part of the country--the Bines."

"The--ah--"

"Bines; family from Montana; decent enough sort; didn't know but you might have heard of them, being from your part of the country."

"Ah, I never think of that vulgar West as 'my part of the country' at all. _My_ part is dear old Virginia, where my father, General Tulver, and his father and his father's father all lived the lives of country gentlemen, after the family came here from Devonshire. It was there Colonel Wybert wooed me, though we later removed to New Orleans." Mrs.

Wybert called it "New _Aw_-leens."

"But it was not until my husband became interested in Montana mines that we ventured into that horrid West. So _do_ remember not to confound me with your Western--ah--Bones,--was it not?"

"No, Bines; they'll be here presently, and you can meet them, anyway."

"Is there an old fellow--a queer old character, with them?"

"No, only a son and daughter and the mother."

"Of course I sha'n't mind meeting any friends of yours," she said, with charming graciousness, "but, really, I always understood that you Knickerbockers were so vastly more exclusive. I do recall this name now. I remember hearing tales of the family in Spokane. They're a type, you know. One sees many of the sort there. They make a strike in the mines and set up ridiculous establishments regardless of expense. You see them riding in their carriages with two men in the box--red-handed, grizzled old vulgarians who've roughed it in the mountains for twenty years with a pack-mule and a ham and a pick-axe--with their jug of whiskey--and their frowsy red-faced wives decked out in impossible finery. Yes, I do recall this family. There is a daughter, you say?"

"Yes; Miss Psyche Bines."

"Psyche; ah, yes; it's the same family. I recollect perfectly now. You know they tell the funniest tales of them out there. Her mother found the name 'Psyche' in a book, and liked it, but she p.r.o.nounced it 'Pishy,' and so the girl was called until she became old enough to go to school and learned better."

"Dear me; fancy now!"

"And there are countless tales of the mother's queer sayings. Once a gentleman whom they were visiting in San Francisco was showing her a cabinet of curios. 'Now, don't you find the Pompeiian figurines exquisite?' he asked her. The poor creature, after looking around her helplessly, declared that she _did_ like them; but that she liked the California nectarines better--they were so much juicier."

"You don't tell me; gad! that was a good one. Oh, well, she's a meek, harmless old soul, and really, my family's not the sn.o.bbish sort, you know."

In from the shining sea late that afternoon steamed the _Viluca_. As her chain was rattling through the hawse-hole, Percival, with his sister and Mauburn, came on deck.

"Why, there's the _Chicago_--Higbee's yacht."

"That's the boat," said Mauburn, "that's been piling the white water up in front of her all afternoon trying to overhaul us."

"There's Millie Higbee and old Silas, now."