“We must leave you for an hour or so to write up this gay ball and send in the sketch of it,” said Gaines, wishing Dinsmore to have plenty of time to think over his good fortune, and not to decide to cast it from him too hastily. The “Trinity” walked slowly back to the hotel. On the veranda they parted, the two friends going in the direction of the ballroom, while Dinsmore threw himself into a chair in the shadow of one of the great pillars--to think. How long he sat there he never knew. He was startled at length by the sound of voices. Two people had approached and seated themselves on the rustic bench on the other side of the wide pillar. A massive potted palm screened them from him, performing for him the same service, but he knew well that musical girlish voice which had the power to move his heart at will even yet. It was Queenie Trevalyn, and with her was Raymond Challoner, the handsomest of all the fast, gay set of young millionaires at Newport. I strictly affirm, dear reader, that it was not Dinsmore’s intention to remain there and listen. He would have arisen instantly and quitted the veranda, but fate seemed to decree otherwise. He was unable to raise hand or foot or utter any sound. A terrible numbness seemed to close down upon his every faculty, holding them as in a vise. Words cannot tell the agonies he suffered there. The tortures of the rack, where he would have been stretched limb from limb, until death relieved him, would not have been harder to endure. He heard handsome, indolent Raymond Challoner pour into those pretty pink-tinted ears the story of his love, and he heard the lips of the girl who was more to him than life itself accept the young heir of the Challoner millions, in the sweetest of words. “I have just one odd determination, call it a notion if you will,” he heard the young heir of Challoner say, “and that is, never to wed a girl to whom any other man has ever whispered words of love. No man has ever spoken of love to you, Queenie, or ever asked you to be his bride, has there?” And the girl from whom he had parted on the white sands less than half an hour before steeped her red lips with the horrible falsehood of answering: “No, Raymond, I have never given any one save yourself encouragement to speak to me of love, believe me.” “I almost believed the bronzed and bearded, mysterious Mr. Dinsmore might take it into his head to try to win you,” he remarked, musingly. Queenie Trevalyn laughed an amused laugh.