But it was true that he was newly married.  He was married in Boston, in ’Forty-three or four, to Emily Austin, a far-off cousin of his, whom he had known (he himself was a Carolinian) during his four years at Cambridge.  For his four years in Cambridge were succeeded by two more at the Law School; then he won a great case against Mr. Choate, and was narrowly beaten in an election for Congress; after that it surprised no one to hear the announcement of his engagement to Miss Austin, for his family was unexceptionable and he had a brilliant future.  The marriage came in the fall, rather sooner than people expected, at King’s Chapel.  They went abroad, as was natural; and then he surprised his friends and hers by accepting his consulship and staying there.  And they were imperceptibly, gradually, slowly, and utterly forgotten.

The engagement came out in the spring of ’Forty-three.  And in June of that year young Pinckney had gone to visit his fiancee at Newport.  Had you seen him there, you would have seen him in perhaps the brightest role that fate has yet permitted on this world’s stage.  A young man, a lover, rich, gifted, and ambitious, of social position unquestioned in South Carolina and the old Bay State—­all the world loved him, as a lover; the many envied him, the upper few desired him.  Handsome he has always remained.

And the world did look to him as bright as he to the world.  He was in love, as he told himself, and Miss Austin was a lovable girl; and the other things he was dimly conscious of; and he had a long vacation ahead of him, and was to be married late in the autumn, and he walked up from the wharf in Newport swinging his cane and thinking on these pleasant things.

Newport, in those days, was not the paradise of cottages and curricles, of lawns and laces, of new New Yorkers and Nevada miners; it was the time of big hotels and balls, of Southern planters, of Jullien’s orchestras, and of hotel hops; such a barbarous time as the wandering New Yorker still may find, lingering on the simple shores of Maine, sunning in the verdant valleys of the Green Mountains; in short, it was Arcadia, not Belgravia.  And you must remember that Pinckney, who was dressed in the latest style, wore a blue broadcloth frock coat, cut very low and tight in the waist, with a coat-collar rolling back to reveal a vast expanse of shirt-bosom, surmounted by a cravat of awful splendor, bow-knotted and blue-fringed.  His trousers were of white duck, his boots lacquered, and he carried a gold-tipped cane in his hand.  So he walked up the narrow old streets from the wharf, making a sunshine in those shady places.  It was the hottest hour of a midsummer afternoon; not a soul was stirring, and Pinckney was left to his own pleasant meditations.

He got up the hill and turned into the park by the old mill; over opposite was the great hotel, its piazzas deserted, silent even to the hotel band.  But one flutter of a white dress he saw beneath the trees, and then it disappeared behind them, causing Pinckney to quicken his steps.  He thought he knew the shape and motion, and he followed it until he came upon it suddenly, behind the trees, and it turned.