hair had her back squarely toward the table where Luella and her mother sat. They could not see her face. They could only notice how interested both the young men were in her, and how courteous they were to her; and they decided she must be some very great personage indeed. They watched her half enviously, and began to plan some way to scrape an acquaintance with her. One glimpse they had of her face as the head waiter rushed to draw back her chair when she had finished her dinner. It was a fine, handsome face, younger than they had expected to see, with beautiful sparkling eyes full of mirth and contentment. What was there in the face that reminded them of something? Had they ever met that old lady before?
Luella and her mother brought their dallied dessert to a sudden ending, and followed hard upon the footsteps of the three down the length of the dining-hall; but the lady in gray and her two attendants had disappeared already, and disconsolately they lingered about, looking up and down the length of piazzas in vain hope to see them sitting in one of the great rows of rockers, watching the many-tinted waves in the dying evening light; but there was no sign of them anywhere.
As they stood thus leaning over the balcony, a large automobile, gray, with white cushions, like a great gliding dove, slipped silently up to the entrance below them in the well-bred silence that an expensive machine knows how to assume under dignified owners.
Luella twitched her mother’s sleeve. “That’s Grandon’s car,” she whispered. “P’raps I’ll get asked to go. Let’s sit down here and wait.”
The mother obediently sat down.
CHAPTER V
LUELLA AND HER MOTHER ARE MYSTIFIED
They had not long to wait. They heard the elevator door slide softly open, and then the gentle swish of silken skirts. Luella looked around just in time to be recognized by young Mr. Grandon if he had not at that moment been placing a long white broadcloth coat about his mother’s shoulders. There were four in the party, and Luella’s heart sank. He would not be likely to ask another one. The young man and the gray-silk, thread-lace woman from the other dining-table were going with them, it appeared. Young Mr. Grandon helped the gray-silk lady down the steps while the handsome stranger walked by Mrs. Grandon. They did not look around at the people on the piazza at all. Luella bit her lips in vexation.
“For pity’s sake, Luella, don’t scowl so,” whispered her mother; “they might look up yet and see you.”
This warning came just in time; for young Mr. Grandon just as he was about to start the car glanced up, and, catching Luella’s fixed gaze, gave her a distant bow, which was followed by a courteous lifting of the stranger’s hat.
Aunt Crete was seated beside Mrs. Grandon in the back seat and beaming her joy quietly. She was secretly exulting that Luella and Carrie had not been in evidence yet. She felt that her joy was being lengthened by a few minutes more, for she could not get away from the fear that her sister and niece would spoil it all as soon as they appeared upon the scene.
“I thought Aunt Carrie and Luella would be tired after their all-day trip, and we wouldn’t disturb them to-night,” said Donald in a low tone, looking back to Aunt Crete as the car glided smoothly out from the shelter of the wide piazza.
Aunt Crete smiled happily back to Donald, and raised her eyes with a relieved glance toward the rows of people on the piazza. She had been afraid to look her fill before lest she should see Luella frowning at her somewhere; but evidently they had not got back yet, or perhaps had not finished their dinner.
As Aunt Crete raised her eyes, Luella and her mother looked down into her upturned face enviously, but Aunt Crete’s gaze had but just grazed them and fallen upon an old lady of stately mien with white, fluffy hair like her own, and a white crêpe de chine gown trimmed with much white lace. In deep satisfaction Aunt Crete reflected that, if Luella had aught to say against her aunt’s wearing modest white morning-gowns, she would cite this model, who was evidently an old aristocrat if one might judge by her jewels and her general make-up.
“Somewhere I’ve seen that woman with the gray silk!” exclaimed Luella’s mother suddenly as Aunt Crete swept by. “There’s something real familiar about the set of her shoulders. Look at the way she raises her hand to her face. My land! I believe she reminds me of your Aunt Crete!”
“Now, mother!” scorned Luella. “As if Aunt Crete could ever look like that! You must be crazy to see anything in such an elegant lady to remind you of poor old Aunt Crete. Why, ma, this woman is the real thing! Just see how her hair’s put up. Nobody but a French maid could get it like that. Imagine Aunt Crete with a French maid. O, I’d die laughing. She’s probably washing our country cousin’s supper dishes at this very minute. I wonder if her conscience doesn’t hurt her about my lavender organdie. Say, ma, did you notice how graceful that handsome stranger was when he handed the ladies into the car? My, but I’d like to know him. I think Clarence Grandon is just a stuck-up prig.”
Her mother looked at her sharply.
“Luella, seems to me you change your mind a good deal. If I don’t make any mistake, you came down here so’s to be near him. What’s made you change your mind? He doesn’t seem to go with any other girls.”
“No, he just sticks by his mother every living minute,” sighed Luella unhappily. “I do wish I had that lavender organdie. I look better in that than anything else I’ve got. I declare I think Aunt Crete is real mean and selfish not to send it. I’m going in to see if the mail has come; and, if the organdie isn’t here, nor any word from Aunt Crete, I’m going to call her up on the telephone again.”
Luella vanished into the hotel office, and her mother sat and rocked with puckered brows. She very much desired a place in high society for Luella, but how to attain it was the problem. She had not been born for social climbing, and took hardly to it.
Meantime the motor-car rolled smoothly over the perfect roads, keeping always that wonderful gleaming sea in sight; and Aunt Crete, serenely happy, beamed and nodded to the pleasant chat of Mrs. Grandon, and was so overpowered by her surroundings that she forgot to be overpowered by the grand Mrs. Grandon. As in a dream she heard the kindly tone, and responded mechanically to the questions about her journey and the weather in the city, and how lovely the sea was to-night; but, as she spoke the few words with her lips, her soul was singing, and the words of its song were these:
“Must I be carried to the skies
On flowery beds of ease,
While others fought to win the prize
And sailed through bloody seas?”
And it seemed to her as they glided along the palace-lined shore, with the rolling sea on one hand, and the beautiful people in their beautiful raiment at ease and happy on the other hand, that she was picked right up out of the hot little brick house in the narrow street, and put on a wonderfully flowery bed of ease, and was floating right into a heaven of which her precious Donald was a bright, particular angel. She forgot all about Luella and what she might say, and just enjoyed herself.
She even found herself telling the elegant Mrs. Grandon exactly how she made piccalilli, and her heart warmed to the other woman as she saw that she was really interested. She had never supposed, from the way in which Luella
