t," was the comment of
Major Fairfax when he heard of the drive in the Park. "Gad! most of
'em would have cut Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there
would have been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such
a woman as Jack's mother. If there were not one of them now and then
society would deliquesce." And the Major knew, for his principal
experience had been with a deliquescent society.

Whether Carmen admired Mrs. Delancy or thought her weak it is impossible
to say, but she understood the advances made and responded to them, for
they fell in perfectly with her social plans. She even had the face
to eulogize Mrs. Delancy to Jack, her breadth of view, her lack of
prejudice, and she had even dared to say, "My dear friend, she is too
good for us," and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had accepted
the implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he did
not see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about
his wife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment was that the
comradeship of Miss Tavish and Carmen was agreeable to him. They were
no restraint upon him. So long as they remained in town the exchange of
civilities was kept up. Carmen and Miss Tavish were often at his house,
and there was something reassuring to Jack in the openness with which
affairs went on.

Early in June Edith went down to their rented cottage on the south Long
Island shore. In her delicate health the doctor had recommended the
seaside, and this locality as quiet and restful, and not too far from
the whirl of the city. The place had a charm of its own, the charm,
namely, of a wide sky, illimitable, flashing, changing sea, rolling in
from the far tropical South with its message of romance to the barren
Northern shore, and the pure sand dunes, the product of the whippings of
tempests and wild weather. The cottage was in fact an old farmhouse, not
an impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like
a tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with
barns and outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden--a place with a salty
air friendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage.
If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and
the low-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination to
fancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled
in the sand, that it had been remodeled and