Edith Wharton

False Dawn Edith Wharton

HAY, verbena and mignonette scented the languid July day. Large strawberries, crimsoning through sprigs of mint, floated in a bowl of pale yellow cup on theverandah table: an old Georgian bowl, with complex reflections on polygonal flanks, engraved with the Raycie arms between lions' heads. Now and again the gentlemen, warned by a menacing hum, slapped their cheeks, their brows or their bald crowns;but they did so as furtively as possible, for Mr. Halston Raycie, on whose verandahthey sat, would not admit that there were mosquitoes at High Point. The strawberries came from Mr. Raycie's kitchen garden; the Georgian bowlcame from his great-grandfather (father of the Signer); the verandah was that of hiscountry-house, which stood on a height above the Sound, at a convenient drivingdistance from his town house in Canal Street."Another glass, Commodore," said Mr. Raycie, shaking out a cambrichandkerchief the size of a table-cloth, and applying a corner of it to his steamingbr