Dappled sunlight filters through swaying palms as two riders on horseback pick their way along a sandy path past the ancient coral-stone walls of Sprat Hall — St. Croix's oldest surviving plantation great house, built around 1670 by French colonists and still radiating a haunted colonial grandeur. A sleek black hound pauses in the foreground as if posing for the shot, while a ruined sugar-mill tower peeks through the tree canopy at right, silent witness to centuries of Caribbean history. The sender, who signs herself Jean, dashed off a breezy note to Harry at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., reporting that the weather is "perfect" and that protests back home won't stop her from enjoying a day or two aboard the Gulfstream — a delicious slice of mid-century jet-set wandering preserved in ink and chrome color.