Hamil smiled, recognising in the name the most outrageously expensive of New York florists who had made a fortune in cut flowers.

“Have a drink?” persisted Mr. Rawley.  “No?  Too early for you?  Well, let’s get a couple of niggers and wheel-chairs.”

But Hamil declined with the easy good-humour which characterised him; and a few moments later, learning at the office that his aunt would receive him, followed his negro guide through endless carpeted labyrinths and was ushered by a maid into a sunny reception-room.

“Garry!—­you dear boy!” exclaimed his amazingly youthful aunt, holding out both arms to him from the door of her bedroom, partly ajar.  “No—­don’t come near me; I’m not even in complete negligee yet, but I will be in one minute when Titine fastens me up and makes the most of my scanty locks—­” She looked out at him with a laugh and gave her head a little jerk forward, and her splendid chestnut hair came tumbling down in the sunshine.

“You’re prettier than ever,” said her nephew; “they’ll take us for bride and groom as usual.  I say, Constance, I suppose they’ve followed you down here.”

“Who, Garry,”—­very innocently.

“The faithful three, Colonel Vetchen, Cuyp, and old—­I mean the gracefully mature Courtlandt Classon.  Are they here?”

“I believe so, dear,” admitted his aunt demurely.  “And, Garry, so is Virginia Suydam.”

“Really,” he said, suddenly subdued as his aunt who was forty and looked twenty-five came forward in her pretty chamber-gown, and placed two firm white arms around him and kissed him squarely and with vigour.

“You dear!” she said; “you certainly are the best-looking boy in all Florida.  When did you come?  Is Jim Wayward’s yacht here still?  And why didn’t he come to see me?”

“The Ariani sailed for Miami last night after I landed.  I left my card, but the office people rang and rang and could get no answer—­”

“I was in bed!  How stupid of me!  I retired early because Virginia and I had been dissipating shamefully all the week and my aged bones required a rest....  And now tell me all about this new commission of yours.  I have met the Cardross family; everybody at Palm Beach is talking about the magnificent park Mr. Cardross is planning; and your picture has appeared in the local paper, and I’ve told everybody you’re quite wonderful, and everybody now is informing everybody else that you’re quite wonderful!”

His very gay aunt lay back in her great soft chair, pushing with both fair hands the masses of chestnut hair from her forehead, and smiling at him out of her golden brown eyes—­the jolliest, frankest of eyes—­the sort even women trust instinctively at first glimpse.

So he sat there and told her all about his commission and how this man, Neville Cardross, whom he had never even seen, had written to him and asked him to make the most splendid park in America around the Cardross villa, and had invited him to be his guest during his stay in Florida.