"I wonder how you'll like this place," she mused. "It's gay--in a way. There are things to do every moment if you let people rob you of your time--dances, carnivals, races, gambling, suppers. There's the Fortnightly Club, and various charities too, and dinners and teas and all sorts of things to do outdoors on land and on water. Are you fond of shooting?"
"So can I. We'll go with my father and Gray. Gray is my brother; you'll meet him at luncheon. What time is it?"
He looked at his watch. "Eleven--a little after."
"We're missing the bathing. Everybody splashes about the pool or the ocean at this hour. Then everybody sits on the veranda of _The Breakers_ and drinks things and gossips until luncheon. Rather intellectual, isn't it?"
She leaned over the parapet, standing on the tips of her white shoes and looked down at the school of fish. Presently she pointed to a snake swimming against the current.
"No, only a water snake. They call everything moccasins down here, but real moccasins are not very common."
"Scarcer still. You hear stories, but--" She shrugged her shoulders. "Of course when we are quail shooting it's well to look where you step, but there are more snakes in the latitude of Saint Augustine than there are here. When father and I are shooting we never think anything about them. I'm more afraid of those horrid wood-ticks. Listen; shall we go camping?"
"But I have work on hand," he said dejectedly.
"That is part of your work. Father said so. Anyway I know he means to camp with you somewhere in the hammock, and if Gray goes I go too."
"Calypso," he said, "do you know what I've been hearing about you? I've heard that you are the most assiduously run-after girl at Palm Beach. And if you are, what on earth will the legions of the adoring say when you take to the jungle?"
"Who said that about me?" she asked, smiling adorably.
"You don't mean to say," he continued perversely, "that I have monopolised the reigning beauty of Palm Beach for an entire morning."
"Yes, you have and it is high time you understood it. _Who_ said this to _you_?"
"Do you know," said Shiela Cardross slowly, "that Miss Palliser has been exceedingly nice to me? But her friend, Miss Suydam, is not very civil."