This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XII. GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY. 'In two words, you have amused yourself, my dear.' Under cover of the friendly twilight, Gaston Arbuthnot pressed his wife's hand as it rested, a little shyly, on his arm. 'A good sign for the future. You must enter into the world more, Dinah. You must cultivate this faculty for being amused; I desire nothing better.' Though fog-banks and disaster might he in ambush about the Eace of Alderney, nothing could be tranquiller than the fair summer evening here, on the coast of France. After an excellent dinner, vraie cuisine Normande, served in the quaint, red-tiled salle of the H6tel Chateaubriand, the collected yachting party were now progressing along the pleasant sweep of road that leads to Luc. Luc alone, among this group of villages, has a jetty, and off Luc the Princess lay moored. Daylight's last nicker was dying from the sky. Already deep fissures of shade intersected the white sand dunes bordering the shore. The sea lay motionless, a vague iridescence far away, northward, the only foreboding of coming change. Cassandra Tighe, a bold spot of colour in the gloaming, had exchanged her dredging net for some amphibious structure of green gauze and whalebone. She flitted hither and thither among the bushes that skirted the path, moth-hunting. The younger members of tne expedition, in groups of two, loitered slowly along their way, for it was an hour when girlish faces look their fairest, when men's voices are apt to softer involuntarily! Dinah Arbuthnot, after a good deal of strategy, had contrived not merely to get possession of her husband, but to hold him, strongly guarded, and at safe distance from the rest. Linda Thorne, herself (and Linda had, at will, a longer or a shorter sight than other people), could scarce d...
