“And he wouldn’t!” cried the girl, looking up and speaking in an unsteady voice.

“Let me finish.  He is, so I think, the sort of man that would not let any fortune, or anything else, stand in the way when his heart was concerned.  I somehow feel that he could not change—­faithfulness, that is his notion.  If he only knew—­”

“He never shall! he never shall!” cried the girl in alarm—­“never!”

“And you think, child, that he doesn’t know?  Come!  That sail has been coming straight towards us ever since we sat here, never tacked once.  That is omen enough for one day.  See how the light strikes it.  Come!”

The Newport season was not, after all, very gay.  Society has become so complex that it takes more than one Englishman to make a season.  Were it the business of the chronicler to study the evolution of this lovely watering-place from its simple, unconventional, animated days of natural hospitality and enjoyment, to its present splendid and palatial isolation of a society—­during the season—­which finds its chief satisfaction in the rivalry of costly luxury and in an atmosphere of what is deemed aristocratic exclusiveness, he would have a theme attractive to the sociologist.  But such a noble study is not for him.  His is the humble task of following the fortunes of certain individuals, more or less conspicuous in this astonishing flowering of a democratic society, who have become dear to him by long acquaintance.

It was not the fault of Mrs. Mavick that the season was so frigid, its glacial stateliness only now and then breaking out in an illuminating burst of festivity, like the lighting-up of a Montreal ice-palace.  Her spacious house was always open, and her efforts, in charity enterprises and novel entertainments, were untiring to stimulate a circulation in the languid body of society.

This clever woman never showed more courage or more tact than in this campaign, and was never more agreeable and fascinating.  She was even popular.  If she was not accepted as a leader, she had a certain standing with the leaders, as a person of vivacity and social influence.  Any company was eager for her presence.  Her activity, spirit, and affability quite won the regard of the society reporters, and those who know Newport only through the newspapers would have concluded that the Mavicks were on the top of the wave.  She, however, perfectly understood her position, and knew that the sweet friends, who exchanged with her, whenever they met, the conventional phrases of affection commented sarcastically upon her ambitions for her daughter.  It was, at the same time, an ambition that they perfectly understood, and did not condemn on any ethical grounds.  Evelyn was certainly a sweet girl, rather queerly educated, and never likely to make much of a dash, but she was an heiress, and why should not her money be put to the patriotic use of increasing the growing Anglo-American cordiality?