After dinner he went out to the veranda, sat himself on one of the chairs by the railing, and smoked an expensive cigar.  He was beginning to feel strangely lonely.  There seemed to be very few people in the hotel, and he experienced his first pang of helplessness, of doubt.  He had supposed that the hotel would be full of great people.  As he glanced down the avenue, those big houses seemed like tombs, buried, themselves, under a rank growth of foliage.  And it was so wondrous quiet!

His cigar cheered him somewhat, and he sauntered back to the office and entered into conversation with the clerk, a good-humored little Englishman with cheeks like his own apples.  The clerk knew at a glance that the stranger was neither a “swell” nor a frequenter of Newport; but he liked his manly appearance, and readily met his advances.  To his dismay, Webb learned that the “swells” no longer went to the hotels; or, if obliged to do so for a short period, secluded themselves in their rooms.  They lived in cottages.  Oh yes! all those fine houses were called cottages.  It was a sort of fad—­American modesty, the clerk supposed.  There was not much run of any sort at the hotel until the fifteenth, when a good many tourists came.  Oh yes! there were some people there, mostly old ones, who had come every season for many years, he believed.  Rather depressing parties, these; they looked so old-fashioned, and didn’t do much to brighten up things.

Webb, with growing dejection, left the hotel and strolled up the avenue.  There his spirits revived.  The avenue was so beautiful, so gloomy, so old!  He drew in deep inhalations of its unmistakably aristocratic atmosphere.  He felt its subtle possessing influence.  Once more his imagination awakened.  He leaned on a Gothic gateway and gazed upon a superb Queen Anne cottage with Tudor towers.  Incongruities in architecture mattered nothing to him.  He precipitated his astral part through the massive door and wandered, with ponderous, thoughtful tread, over the deep carpets of the drawing-rooms and corridors.  He drank tea on the back veranda with languid dames and with men who had never stood at desks.  He threw himself into an arm-chair and listened to a slim-waisted smooth-haired girl coquetting with the piano.  He sat with the haughty chatelaine and talked of—­there his imagination failed him.  He hardly knew what these people talked of, although he had read many society novels.  As far as his memory served him, they talked of nothing in particular.  He wandered down the avenue, dreaming his dream at many gate-posts.  He saw no one, but thereby was the illusion deepened.  Newport for the hour was his.

He returned to the hotel veranda, lit another cigar, and was about to meditate upon some plan of campaign, when suddenly an odd and delightful thing happened.  It was four-and-thirty of the clock.  As if to the ringing of a bell and the rising of a curtain, Bellevue Avenue became suddenly alive with carriages.  The big gates seemed to yawn simultaneously and discharge their expensive freight.  It was as if these actors in the Newport drama would lose their weekly salary did they step on the boards a moment too late.  The avenue, with its gay frocks and parasols, was like a long flower-bed in spring.  Webb’s cigar went out.  He leaned forward eagerly, straining his eyes.