Constance, I suppose they've followed you
down here."

"Who, Garry,"--very innocently.

"The faithful three, Colonel Vetchen, Cuyp, and old--I mean the
gracefully mature Courtlandt Classon. Are they here?"

"I believe so, dear," admitted his aunt demurely. "And, Garry, so is
Virginia Suydam."

"Really," he said, suddenly subdued as his aunt who was forty and looked
twenty-five came forward in her pretty chamber-gown, and placed two firm
white arms around him and kissed him squarely and with vigour.

"You dear!" she said; "you certainly are the best-looking boy in all
Florida. When did you come? Is Jim Wayward's yacht here still? And why
didn't he come to see me?"

"The _Ariani_ sailed for Miami last night after I landed. I left my
card, but the office people rang and rang and could get no answer--"

"I was in bed! How stupid of me! I retired early because Virginia and I
had been dissipating shamefully all the week and my aged bones required
a rest.... And now tell me all about this new commission of yours. I
have met the Cardross family; everybody at Palm Beach is talking about
the magnificent park Mr. Cardross is planning; and your picture has
appeared in the local paper, and I've told everybody you're quite
wonderful, and everybody now is informing everybody else that you're
quite wonderful!"

His very gay aunt lay back in her great soft chair, pushing with both
fair hands the masses of chestnut hair from her forehead, and smiling at
him out of her golden brown eyes--the jolliest, frankest of eyes--the
sort even women trust instinctively at first glimpse.

So he sat there and told her all about his commission and how this man,
Neville Cardross, whom he had never even seen, had written to him and
asked him to make the most splendid park in America around the Cardross
villa, and had invited him to be his guest during his stay in Florida.

"They evidently are nice people from the way Mr. Cardross writes," he
said. "You say you know them, Constance?"

"I've met them several times--the way you meet people here. They have a
villa--rather imposing in an exotic fashion. Why, yes, Garry, they _are_
nice; dreadfully wealthy, tremendously popular. Mrs. Carrick, the
married daughter, is very agreeable; her mother is amiable and
dreadfully stout. Then there's a boy of your age--Gray Cardross--a
well-mannered youth who drives motors, and whom Mr. Classon calls a
'speed-mad cub.' Then there is Cecile Cardross--a debuta