n the ferryboat from the
city to Long Island, and saw me into a train, which in less than an hour
set me down at Rosslyn, a mile or so from my friend's house. At the
station gates there were several footmen waiting, just as there might
have been at Ascot or Three Bridges, and several private carriages. One
of these--a large omnibus--was my host's. I entered it, followed by an
orthodox lady's maid, who was laden with delicate parcels evidently from
New York, and we were off. The country, for the time was January, was
covered with deep snow, which clung to the boughs of pine trees and
glittered on cottage roofs. A mile or two away from the station we
turned into a private drive, which, mounting a parklike slope, with dark
pines for its fringes, brought us to Lloyd Bryce's house. It was a
house of true Georgian pattern--a central block with two symmetrical
wings. Its red bricks might have been fading there for a couple of
hundred years. Indoors there was the same quiet simplicity. The grave
butler and two excellent footmen were English. The only features which
were noticeably not English were the equable heat which seemed to
prevail everywhere and the fact that half-drawn portieres were
substituted for closed doors.

On the evening of my arrival two young men came to dinner. They were
brothers, sons of a father who had rented for several years Lord Lovat's
castle in the Highlands. Next morning I was sent for a drive in a
sleigh. Here, too, I came across things familiar. The coachman was
Irish. He had been born on the lands of a family with which I was well
acquainted, and I was pleased by the interest he displayed when I
answered the questions which he put to me about the three young ladies.
A pleasant indolence would, however, have made me more contented with
the glow of a wood fire and conversation with an old friend than with
any ventures in the chill of the outer air. I was, therefore, somewhat
disquieted when I found, a day or two later, that my host had arranged
to give me a dinner in New York at the Metropolitan Club, then to take
me on to the opera, and not bring me back till midnight. But the
expedition was interesting. The marbles, the gilding, the goddesses, the
gorgeous ceilings of the Metropolitan Club would have made the Golden
House of Nero seem tame in comparison. The grand tier at the opera was
a semicircle of dazzling dresses, though there was not, as happens in
London, any obtrusion of diamonds. Here was