Viewed objectively, they all, with the exception of Linda, seemed alike; but that might have been due to their common impressive setting. The Boscombe, in its way, was as lavish as Mrs. Condon's dresses. The main place of congregation, for instance, was a great space of white marble columns, Turkey-red carpet and growing palms. It was lighted at night indirectly by alabaster bowls hanging on gilded chains--a soft bright flood of radiance falling on the seated or slowly promenading women with bare shoulders. Usually they were going with a restrained sharp eagerness toward the dining-room or leaving it in a more languid flushed repletion. There were, among them, men; but somehow the men never seemed to be of the least account. It was a women's paradise. The glow from above always emphasized the gowns, the gowns like orchids and tea-roses and the leaves of magnolias. It sparkled in the red and green and crystal jewels like exotic dew scattered over the exotic human flowers. Very occasionally there was a complacent or irritable masculine utterance, and then it was immediately lost in the dominant feminine sibilance. Other children than Linda sped in the manner of brilliant fretful tops literally on the elaborate outskirts of the throng; but they were as different from her as she was from the elders. Indeed Linda resembled the latter, rather than her proper age, remarkably. She had an air of responsibility, sometimes expressed in a troubled frown, and again by the way she hurried sedately through drifting figures toward a definite purpose and end. Usually it was in the service of one of her mother's small innumerable requests or necessities; if the latter were sitting with a gentleman on the open hotel promenade that overlooked the sea and needed a heavier wrap, Linda returned immediately with a furred cloak on her arm; if the elder, going out after dinner, had brought down the wrong gloves, Linda knew the exact wanted pair in the long perfumed box; while countless trifles were needed from the convenient drug-store. The latter was a place of white mosaic floor and glittering glass, with a marble counter heaped with vivid fruit and silver-covered bowls of sirups and creams with chopped nuts. Linda often found time to stop here for a delectable glass of assorted sweet compounds. She was on terms of intimacy with the colored man in a crisp linen coat who presided over the refreshments, and he invariably gave her an extra spoonful of the marron paste she preferred. When at lunch, it might be, she cared for very little, her mother would complain absently: