For the first time she felt a sense of peace in her life and, away from
her uncle's baneful influence, a restored freshness was entering her
very being. She sat gazing across that beautiful sea with its blue
surface flecked by rippling streaks of turquoise, or purple, or deep
emerald, as its wondrous depths were affected by a brilliant sun.
Distant smoke trailed in the wake of some steamer that may have
"tramped" the world around, or of an Orient liner that was conveying
white rulers to the far-away portions of our Eastern Empire.
Gilda thought of Raife and his mad passion for her. She wished to tell
him all--at least all she knew. She felt that she could hardly tell how
much she knew, nor did she know how much she could tell. She did
realise that she had treated him badly, but why had he followed and
discovered her? Should she put an end to her perplexities by a short,
sharp road to death? Rousing herself from this reverie, Gilda left the
seat, with the wonderful view, and sauntered along a winding path
embowered with foliage. As she turned the bend of the pathway she saw
in front of her, on a jutting headland, an elderly lady and a young man.
They, in turn, were gazing seaward.
The young man of to-day is more daring in his costume and displays more
individuality than those of a generation ago. It was not hard, even at
this distance of a few hundred yards, for Gilda to recognise Raife
Remington standing on the jutting rock with his mother.
This young man, who had just inherited large estates and a handsome
income, in tragic circumstances, was easy to identify. With a lineage
dating from Henry the Seventh, and the later period when Sir Henry
Reymingtoune was Chancellor to Queen Elizabeth, and men's fashions
rivalled in costliness those of the women, it was natural that Raife
should possess judgment in such matters.
Queen Elizabeth has been counted the most extravagantly dressed woman of
all time, unless it may be believed that the Queen of Sheba affected a
similar extravagance. The pictorial souvenirs of the costumes of
Elizabeth are more reliable than those of the days of Sheba, but it is
not an important point to decide.
The centuries that have elapsed since the brave days of Drake, Frobisher
and Hawkins, and the other bold admirals who founded the British empire,
have induced a comparative drabness in men's clothing, and a severity in
style.
Much of this has been altered in these later years by imaginative young
Americans, who have learnt to deck themselves out more elaborately in
cravaterie, hosiery, and general lingerie, whilst newspapers devote
columns to the cut of suitings, and the latest form of shoe string, or
the brim and feathered tuft that should rule the form of an Alpine hat.
These despised and minor considerations now, concern the youth of
Britain and the continent of Europe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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