Page:Leon Wilson - Ruggles of Red Gap.djvu/143

Rh How profoundly may our whole destiny be affected by the mood of an idle moment; by some superficial indecision, mere fruit of a transient unrest. We lightly debate, we hesitate, we yawn, unconscious of the brink. We half-heartedly decline a suggested course, then lightly accept from sheer ennui, and "life," as I have read in a quite meritorious poem, "is never the same again." It was thus I now toyed there with my fate in my hands, as might a child have toyed with a bauble. I mean to say, I was looking for nothing thick.

"She's wrote a very fancy piece for that newspaper," Cousin Egbert went on, handing me the sheets of manuscript. Idly I glanced down the pages.

"Yesterday saw the return to Red Gap of Mrs. Senator James Knox Floud and Egbert G. Floud from their extensive European tour," it began. Farther I caught vagrant lines, salient phrases: "—the well-known social leader of our North Side set … planning a series of entertainments for the approaching social season that promise to eclipse all previous gayeties of Red Gap's smart set … holding the reins of social leadership with a firm grasp … distinguished for her social graces and tact as a hostess … their palatial home on Ophir Avenue, the scene of so much of the smart social life that has distinguished our beautiful city."

It left me rather unmoved from my depression, even the concluding note: "The Flouds are accompanied by their English manservant, secured through the kind offices of the brother of his lordship Earl of Brinstead, the well-known English peer, who will no doubt do much to impart to the coming functions that air of smartness which