: The Terms of Surrender by Tracy Louis - Fiction

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moments, never be granted these breathing-spaces of mild abandonment. And so, wroth with himself, and vexed with the sorry scheme of things, he went to his rooms.

Next morning, to make sure, he rode to Nancy's house. No; Mrs. Marten had not ordered her horse; in fact, she had not appeared as yet, and the pleasant-spoken butler, showing the requisite confidence in the discretion of a recognized friend, added that his mistress would not be "at home" to anyone before luncheon.

Then, the weather being glorious and the air like champagne, Power whistled care to the devil, and cantered into the town to review the ground for the night's fixture.

Newport today boasts of almost uncountable hotels and boarding-houses, nor was the area of choice limited in that respect nearly a generation ago. After careful scrutiny of various buildings in the business quarter, Power selected a caf? run by a certain Giovanni Pestalozzi as the most promising. It looked clean and bright, and an Italian might be trusted to be discreet.

Getting a man to hold his horse, he interviewed Giovanni, and was assured that Delmonico's itself could not produce a better meal if the signor invited comparison. The signor wanted nothing elaborate, however. He admitted he was not well versed in either menus or wines, but demanded the best, and, after inspecting a well-furnished room overlooking the street, lodged a ten-dollar bill as earnest money, with a promise of ample largess if he were pleased. Then he rode away to the Ocean House, sent a note to Nancy, and received a reply which deepened his mystified dismay.

For she wrote:

"Dear Derry, I shall be there at seven-thirty. Meanwhile, go to the Casino, and tell everybody that you are summoned to New York on business, and mean to leave either tonight by the Fall River steamer or by first train tomorrow. You are traveling by the train to oblige me; so I am not asking you to indulge in polite fiction.

"Yours ever, "NANCY."

He carried out instructions to the letter, and was chaffed mildly for deserting the place just as his friends were getting to like him. It was easy to promise a speedy return, if possible; though he felt, somehow, that he would never see Newport again. The conclusion of his horse-dealing transactions took up a good deal of the afternoon, and, to his regret, Dacre was out with a yachting party; so he left a hurriedly written message about his pending departure.

Then he strolled out, went downtown by street car, and met Nancy when she alighted from a rickety cab at the door of Pestalozzi's caf?. She wore a cream-tinted dress, and her piquant features were daintily framed in a big Leghorn hat. It pleased him to find that she had not even deigned to veil her face, and her cheerful cry of recognition showed no conscience-stricken sense of guilt because of a meeting which, if known, must have excited the suspicions of her intimates.

"Ah, there you are, Derry!" she said. "Was there ever a more punctual person? Am I late? I had such a load of things to do that I left dressing till the last moment. Is this where we dine? What a jolly little caf?! It is just like hundreds of such establishments in Rome and Naples. I suppose these Italian restaurateurs employ their fellow-countrymen as builders and decorators; so they carry their architecture and fittings with them."

"They change their skies, but not their soups," said Power, falling in with her mood, and the driver of Nancy's cab recognized the adaptation of Horace's tag, and was pleased to grin, being himself a broken-down graduate of Harvard.

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