It was the first time since her marriage that Virginia had honoured the Van Reenan property with her presence; but being debarred, by the fact of her mourning for her husband's uncle, from participation in the gay life of those summer resorts where the _élite_ of the smart world do mostly congregate, she had elected to retire upon one of these many-gabled, ancestral mansions. She was explaining all this--and really it appeared to require a surprising amount of explanation--to Mr. Horace Greener, a young man of distinguished, social pretensions, the constant frequenter of her entertainments both in Newport and New York, who, finding himself obliged to visit the city on business, had sought at once physical refreshment and satisfaction of the emotion of friendship by running out by train, to-day, to visit her. Virginia's clear intonations rose superior to the chorus of feminine voices around her, their singular vivacity and singular composure alike offering an unconscious challenge to Laurence's mental attitude as he lazily tore open his English letters and newspapers. He had left Stoke Rivers just three weeks, and all that time he had been a prey to vacuity, to a sort of gnawing emptiness. At moments a blind rage took him, but only at moments. In the main his attitude was cynical. Disappointment had embittered him. Nothing mattered much, nothing ever would matter much again. He had had his great chance and lost it, muddled it somehow. A bigger man would have over-ridden the difficulties of the affair. But he was a bungler, a poor creature. He was profoundly contemptuous of himself, and not a little contemptuous also of men and things. But here was a thick packet from Armstrong, and that awoke an unexpected interest in him. It would be quite pleasant to have news of the light railway, and the gypsum quarries.--Nice fellow, that young engineer, and not at all conceited. Most experts have such a confoundedly good opinion of themselves!--Laurence fell to whistling softly, and involuntarily he recalled the slender, courtly music of a certain eighteenth century minuet. Then he stopped suddenly, an immense nostalgia taking him for a very different scene and place, and--well, a general outlook less secure and circumscribed, and, he had almost said, trivial. He didn't want to be censorious--who was he, after all, in good truth, to be that?--but Horace Greener's trim, light-clad person, leaning against a pillar of the verandah close to Virginia's rocking-chair, caught his eye. The young man was excellently got up, he was well-bred, agreeable, would pass muster in any society; yet Laurence wearied mightily of him just then--of his neatly handsome features, which would photograph so well and paint so poorly, and of his alert and civil manner.