ou in that way, Mr.
Canning--"

"I can only observe that you've thrown out a number of perfectly ripping
suggestions already--walking on the piazza, for example. Mightn't we
steal that diversion from afternoon temporarily, don't you think?
Perhaps Mrs. Heth would agree to pursue the missing breeze so far?"

"That would be nice," said Carlisle.

You could distinctly hear his thundering feet now....

Strolling for four was agreed upon, and that simple afternoon amusement
started. But, arriving at the piazza, the dowager discovered that, after
all, the night air was just a little cool for her, and turned back, not
without some beaming. She mentioned the Blue Parlor as her port of call,
where smoking was forbidden. Willie, doing his duty as he saw it,
dropped his cigar into a brass repository. He had faults like the rest
of us, had Willie, but his deathless loyalty deserved a monument in
a park.

Carlisle and Mr. Canning strolled on alone. She walked outwardly serene
as the high-riding moon, but inwardly with a quickening sense of
triumph, hardly clouded at all now. As she and mamma had planned it, so
it had fallen out....

Many eyes had followed this shining pair as they quitted the common
gathering-place. She, as we have seen, was inviting as a spectacle. He,
to the nobodies, was simply one of the sights of the place, like the
Fort. And his distinguished House was still a small one, at that, not
yet arrived where another generation would unfailingly put it. If the
grandfather of Hugo Canning had founded the family, financially
speaking, it was his renowned father who had raised it so fast and far,
doubling and redoubling the Canning fortune with a velocity by no means
unprecedented in the eighties and nineties. To-day there were not many
names better known in the world of affairs, in the rarer social
altitudes, even in the shore-hotels of the provinces....

And the son and heir of the name and fortune, who now trod the Beach
piazza with Miss Carlisle Heth, was obviously more than many sons of
wealth, much more than a mere trousered incident to millions. This one
saw in the first glance at his Olympian bearing; but Carlisle Heth knew
more than that. Upon this young man the enterprising vehicles of modern
history had, long since, conferred an individual celebrity. Often had
the Sunday editors told their "public" of his exploits in the sporting
and social realms, as they called them; not rarely had journals of a
mor