And have we of to-day no likeness to this pagan Heliogabalus? Do not we bury the best-beloved of our past beneath a cere-cloth, formed of the sweet sentiments of forgetfulness; and, turning from their appealing eyes and sadly accusing faces, enter with fresh zest and renewed enthusiasm upon the untried excitements of the hour? Are we, after two thousand years of Christ's humanity, and the awful lessons of Gethsemane and Golgotha, so much less pagan?
Mrs. Newbold had taken Dick Darling with her in her flitting; she had come to have a very true affection for that somewhat crude young lady, for Esther possessed so much of the alchemist's power as to recognise pure gold when she found it; and also Miss Darling's outspoken admiration for Patricia Hildreth acted as a salve to her disappointed and fruitless projects.
To Dick herself the prospect of three weeks or a month at Newport on board the most perfectly appointed yacht of the squadron, with unlimited license to enjoy the passing hour to the full, was, in her own phraseology, "just too most awfully nailing!" She danced and she flirted, the latter in her own half-boyish fashion. She smoked everybody's cigarettes save her own. She won the ladies' single-handed lawn tennis tournament, and sported the prize--a jewelled racket and ball brooch--with frank delight in her own prowess. She drove Freddy Slade's tandem up and down Bellevue Avenue all one morning, and sailed Jack Howard's microscopic cutter out to the Narrows and back in the afternoon.
She was, indeed, as happy as the day was long; like Browning's 'Duchess,' "she loved whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere." And then, oh, happy thought, were there not more worlds to conquer in the immediate future? Did not visions of New London, Shelter Island, Mount Desert, and the Isle of Shoales stretch out in endless perspective before her? What girl could dare to be otherwise than sublimely happy so long as the sea laughed, and the sun shone, and there were such beneficent factors in the scheme of life and Providence as horses, and dogs, and boats, to say nothing of men and boys, who were but the playthings of existence?
And through all those long, luxurious summer days, Mr. Tremain remained in town, returning a curt negative to all alluring invitations.