"I think I'll go to the North to live," she decided. "In all this sunshine and colour, one needs love--or else one's out of the picture."
At a little distance Miss Dene was telling Nick Hilliard that she was glad she had met him, because he was just what she wanted for her book about California.
"I'm going to see your ranch," she said, "and Mrs. Gaylor's ranch. I've heard about it--and her. She's very handsome, isn't she?"
"And a great friend of yours--your best friend?"
"A great friend," he echoed, wishing that Angela, holding herself remote, would let him draw her into the conversation.
It occurred to Miss Dene, seeing Nick's eyes wander, that perhaps there was something about her which California men were not trained to appreciate, for she was not having her usual success. And she had scarcely made the sensation she had expected to make in San Francisco, although she had been interviewed, and one reporter had said that her hair was dyed. Nevertheless, if she could not have the sort of fun she wanted, she would at least have what fun she could. She was sure that with Mrs. Gaylor, and the Princess di Sereno, and this big unsophisticated young man, between them life would be interesting even for an onlooker.
"I can see Chapter First, anyhow," she laughed to herself. And again she wondered if Angela "knew about the Prince."
That night, while everybody drank coffee and talked or played bridge in the hall, it was suddenly flooded with a tidal wave of women. They flowed into the hotel in a compact stream of femininity; billows of stout elderly ladies, and dancing ripples of slim young girls, with here and there a side-eddy of thin, middle-aged spinsterhood. Each female thing had a "grip," and of these possessions they built the desk a mountain of volcanic formation, which looked alarmingly subject to eruptions and upheavals. Then they all began to talk at once, to each other and to such hotel officials as they could overwhelm and swamp.
"Good gracious! what is it?" asked Miss Dene of Falconer, who was supposed to be a human encyclopaedia of general information. "I didn't suppose there were so many women in the world!"
"They're Native Daughters, out for an excursion and the time of their lives," said Falconer.