"
Gwynne could think of no better remedy for demoralized nerves than a
flirtation with a resourceful California girl, and if Dick annexed a living
companion for his trying journey to England so much the better.
Gathbroke's excitement subsided quickly. He was in no condition for
sustained enthusiasm. He felt as if quite ten years had passed since he
had half fallen in love with Alexina Groome in a ball room that was now
a charred heap in the sodden wreck of a city he barely could conjure in
memory.
Besides, he had half fallen in love so often. And she was too young. He had
really been more drawn to that strange Miss Dwight; upon whom, however, he
had not yet called.
He felt thankful that the girl _was_ too young for his critical taste. He
wanted nothing more at present in the way of emotions.
CHAPTER XII
I
Rincona had been named in honor of Rincon Hill, where Tom Abbott's
grandmother had reigned in the sixties; a day, when in order to call on her
amiable rival, Mrs. Ballinger, her stout carriage horses were obliged to
plow through miles of sand hills, and to make innumerable detours to avoid
the steep masses of rock, over which in her grandson's day cable car and
trolley glided so lightly until that morning of April eighteen, nineteen
hundred and six.
When her husband, in common with other distinguished citizens, bought an
estate in the San Mateo Valley, she named it Rincona, to the secret wrath
of other eminent ladies who had not thought of it in time.
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