Before him were the wide gates of the Park, the green wooded
knolls rolling away--almost to his home in Harlem. Just beyond the gates
was a bend in the driveway, and he never tired of watching the stream of
carriages wind as from a cavern and roll out to the avenue. The vivid
background claimed as its own those superb traps with their dainty
burdens of women who held their heads so haughtily, whose plumage was so
brilliant. The horses glittered and pranced. The parasols fluttered like
butterflies above the flower-faces beneath. Webb would stand entranced,
bitterly thankful that there was such a scene for him to look upon,
choking back a sob that he had no part in it.
When summer came and Society flitted to Newport, that paradise in which
he only half believed, he was more lonely and glum than the loneliest
and glummest and most _blase_ clubman, who clung to his window because
he hated Newport and could not afford London. Quite accidentally, when
his infatuation was about three years old, he came into a singular
compensation. In the summer, during his ten days' vacation, when he was
tramping through the woods, he fell in with a party of Western people,
who manifested much interest in New York.
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