daughter
resembled her.

They swung carelessly out of their saddles and set spurred foot to
turf, and, with Garret and his guests, sauntered into the big living
hall, where a maid waited with wine and biscuits and the housekeeper
lingered to conduct Thessalie and Dulcie to their rooms.

Dulcie Soane, in her pretty travelling gown, walked beside Mrs.
Reginald Barres into the first great house she had ever entered.
Composed, but shyly enchanted, an odd but delightful sensation
possessed her that she was where she belonged--that such environment,
such people should always have been familiar to her--were logical and
familiar to her now.

Mrs. Barres was saying:

"And if you like parties, there is always gaiety at Northbrook. But
you don't have to go anywhere or do anything you don't wish to."

Dulcie said, diffidently, that she liked everything, and Mrs. Barres
laughed.

"Then you'll be very popular," she said, tossing her riding crop onto
the table and stripping off her wet gloves.

Barres senior was already in serious confab with Westmore concerning
piscatorial conditions, the natural low water of midsummer, the
capricious conduct of the trout in the streams and in the upper and
lower lakes.

"They won't look at anything until sunset," he explained, "and then
they don't mean business. You'll see, Jim. I'm sorry; you should have
come in June."

Lee, Garret's boyishly slim sister, had already begun to exchange
opinions about horses with Thessalie, for both had been familiar with
the saddle since childhood, though the latter's Cossack horsemanship
and mastery of the haute ecole, incident to her recent and irregular
profession, might have astonished Lee Barres.

Mrs. Barres was saying to Dulcie:

"We don't try to entertain one another here, but everybody seems to
have a perfectly good time. The main thing is that we all feel quite
free at Foreland. You'll lose yourself indoors at first. The family
for a hundred years has been adding these absurd two-story wings, so
that the house wanders at random over the landscape, and you may have
to inquire your way about in the beginning."

She smiled again at Dulcie and took her hand in both of hers:

"I'm sure you will like the Farms," she said, linking her other arm
through her son's. "I'm rather wet, Garry," she added, "but I think
Lee and I had better dry out in the saddle." And to Dulcie again: "Tea
at five, if anybody wishes it. Would you like to see your room?"