gh whispering concerning his performances at the Club and the
company he kept there to pique the friendly curiosity of a number of
fashionable young matrons who are always prepossessed in favour of a man
at whom convention might possibly one day glance askance.

So everybody at Palm Beach was at least aware of the affair. Hamil had
heard of it from his pretty aunt, and had been thoroughly questioned. It
was very evident that Miss Palliser viewed the proceedings with dismay
for she also consulted Wayward, and finally, during the confidential
retiring-hour, chose the right moment to extract something definite from
Virginia.

But that pale and pretty spinster was too fluently responsive, admitting
that perhaps she had been seeing a little too much of Malcourt,
protesting it to be accidental, agreeing with Constance Palliser that
more discretion should be exercised, and promising it with a short,
flushed laugh.

And the next morning she rode to the Inlet with Malcourt, swam with him
to the raft, and danced with him until dawn at "The Breakers."

* * * * *

Mrs. Cardross and Jessie Carrick bent over their embroidery; Shiela
continued her letter writing with Gray's stylographic pen; Hamil, booted
and spurred, both pockets stuffed with plans, paced the terrace waiting
for his horse to be brought around; Malcourt had carried himself and his
newspaper to the farther end of the terrace, and now stood leaning over
the balustrade, an unlighted cigarette between his lips.

"I suppose you'll go to Luckless Lake," observed Hamil, pausing beside
Malcourt in his walk.

"Yes. There's plenty to do. We stripped ten thousand trout in October,
and we're putting in German boar this spring."

"I should think your occupation would be fascinating."

"Yes? It's lonely, too, until Portlaw's camp parties begin. I get an
overdose of nature at times. There's nobody of my own ilk there except
our Yale and Cornell foresters. In winter it's deadly, Hamil, deadly! I
don't shoot, you know; it's deathly enough as it is."

"I don't believe I'd find it so."

"You think not, but you would. That white solitude may be good medicine
for some, but it makes me furious after a while, and I often wish that
the woods and the deer and the fish and I myself and the whole devilish
outfit were under the North Pole and frozen solid! But I can't afford to
pick and choose. If I looked about for something else to do I don't
believe