ools of Sienna marble in his flaunting, gaudy "chateau," and was
immediately aped by the rest of the rattle-brained, moved the
Cavendishes not at all. Because the same bounder gave a bathing-suit
party (with the ocean one hundred and fifty miles away), at which
prizes were bestowed on the man and woman who dared wear the least
clothes, while the others of the _nouveaux riches_ applauded and
marvelled at his audacity and originality, simply made the Cavendishes
stay away. Because another mushroom millionaire bought books for his
library by the foot, had gold mangers and silver stalls for his horses,
and adorned himself with diamonds like an Indian Rajah, were no
incentives to the Cavendishes to do likewise. They pursued the even
tenor of the well-bred way.

Cavencliffe was a great, roomy country-house, in the Colonial style,
furnished in chintz and cretonnes, light and airy, with wicker
furniture and bird's-eye maple throughout, save in the dining-room,
where there was the slenderest of old Hepplewhite. Wide piazzas flanked
the house on every side, screened and awninged from the sun and wind
and rain. A winding driveway between privet hedges, led up from the
main road half a mile away, through a maze of giant forest trees amid
which the place was set.

Croyden watched it, thoughtfully, as the car spun up the avenue. He saw
the group on the piazza, the waiting man-servant, the fling upward of a
hand in greeting by a white robed figure. And he sighed.

"My last welcome to Cavencliffe!" he muttered. "It's a bully place, and
a bully girl--and, I think, I had a chance, if I hadn't been such a
fool."

Elaine Cavendish came forward a little way to greet him. And Croyden
sighed, again, as--with the grace he had learned as a child from his
South Carolina mother, he bent for an instant over her hand. He had
never known how handsome she was, until this visit--and he had come to
say good-bye!

"You were good to come," she said.

"It was good of you to ask me," he replied.

The words were trite, but there was a note of intenseness in his tones
that made her look sharply at him--then, away, as a trace of color came
faintly to her cheek.

"You know the others," she said, perfunctorily.

And Croyden smiled in answer, and greeted the rest of the guests.

There were but six of them: Mrs. Chichester, a young matron, of less
than thirty, whose husband was down in Panama explaining some contract
to the Government Engineers; Nanc