He was so engaged in trying to listen intelligently that he did not notice how the road stole away from the river again; and the goal of their three days' ride was almost upon him before he realized it. The great, white coquina house stood on a slight rise of ground, its stables and outbuildings massed behind it. There were lights in its windows, for twilight had fallen, and as the tired horses pricked their ears and whinnied at the thought of oats, servants came running out with lanterns and hubbub. Andrew knew suddenly that he was very tired and struggled from his saddle at last with the stiff awkwardness of a marionette. He was glad to throw the horse's reins to a grinning little boy, but too weary to pay much attention to the bustle about him. "My dear," said Dr. Gentian and kissed a tall woman with a proud nose and a secret mouth delicately upon the cheek. "This is our young friend from New York, Mr. Beard, my dear," and Andrew made his manners dutifully to a worn comely hand and words of greeting that had a foreign slur in them. Then there was another hand, warm and pleasant to touch, and he was being introduced to a yellow-haired girl with eyes grey and changing as winter cloud--"My daughter--Miss Sparta Gentian." But she was not at all like his image of Nausicaa and Andrew felt vaguely disappointed. Then he only knew that he was hobbling up the steps of the porch in a disgracefully ungenteel manner, but he could not help it for each of his boots was made of solid stone. Strength and curiosity returned to him with food and wine, and at last, seated alone with Dr. Gentian while the Madeira passed between them the way of the sun, he began to appraise the circumstances of his new environment. "You will find we live in simple rusticity, Mr. Beard," Dr. Gentian had said--but if these were Florida notions of simple rusticity! It was true that the servants were not in livery and that the dress of the Gentian ladies was not quite in the latest mode, but otherwise, from the old silver plate on the sideboard to the new forte-piano with Lord Kelly's Overtures upon it in the drawing-room, Andrew might have thought himself enjoying the famous hospitality of a Philipse or a William Walton the elder. That was certainly a fruit-piece by Vandermoulen on the wall, and the Indian chintz hangings of his own bedroom could not have been bettered at the fashionable upholsterer, Joseph Cox's. His eye was caught by the flash of a green stone on Dr. Gentian's finger. There was cold, precious light in the stone like the light at the bottom of the eyes of a great cat. "A quaint setting," said his host, politely, "I had it when I served in India. The Begum happened to think me a practitioner in the black arts." He rose, "Shall we join the ladies?"