The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a silken hanging stirred.
Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the decanter three-fourths empty.
It was very still in the room--so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them no more.
The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake. When his lower jaw sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very nervous, got up and hopped down.
It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about him. As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by the windows joined in. Then, straightening up with an effort, something tumbled from his head to the floor and he started to rise.
"Oh, look out, Leroy! Don't step on my hat!" cried a girl's voice; and he sank back in his chair, gazing stupidly around.
"Hello! you people!" he said, amused; "I guess I've been asleep. Oh, is that you Millbank? Whose hat was that--yours, Lydia?"
He yawned, laughed, turning his heavy eyes from one to another, recognising a couple of young girls at the window. He didn't want to get up; but there is, in the society he now adorned, a stringency of etiquette known as "re-finement," and which, to ignore, is to become unpopular.
So he got onto his massive legs and went over to shake hands with a gravity becoming the ceremony.
"How d'ye do, Miss Hutchinson? Thought you were at Asbury Park. How de do, Miss Del Garcia. Have you been out in Millbank's motor yet?"
"We broke down at McGowan's Pass," said Miss Del Garcia, laughing the laugh that had made her so attractive in "A Word to the Wise."
"Muddy gasoline," nodded Millbank tersely--an iron-jawed, over-groomed man of forty, with a florid face shaved blue.
"We passed Mr. Plank's big touring-car," observed Lydia Vyse, shifting Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her automobile coat. "How much does a car like that cost, Leroy?"
"About twenty-five thousand," he said gloomily. Then, looking up, "Hold on, Millbank, don't be going! Why can't you all dine with us? Never mind your car; ours is all right, and we'll run out into the country for dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?"
But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another invitation, in which Millbank was also included.