Court now." Mrs. Brent could not help adding,
curiously, "Why do you ask?"

"I am going to see her. I'm an American."

Mrs. Brent coughed to cover a slight gasp. She had heard remarkable
things of the democratic customs of America. It was painful not to be
able to ask questions.

"The lady in the carriage was the Countess of Dunholm," she said rather
grandly. "They are going to the Court to call on Miss Vanderpoel."

"Then Miss Vanderpoel's there yet. That's all right. Thank you, ma'am,"
and lifting his cap again he turned into the little public house.

The Dunholm party had been accustomed on their rare visits to Stornham
to be received by the kind of man-servant in the kind of livery which
is a manifest, though unwilling, confession. The men who threw open the
doors were of regulation height, well dressed, and of trained bearing.
The entrance hall had lost its hopeless shabbiness. It was a complete
and picturesquely luxurious thing. The change suggested magic. The magic
which had been used, Lord Dunholm reflected, was the simplest and most
powerful on earth. Given surroundings, combined with a gift for knowing
values of form and colour, if you have the power to spend thousands of
guineas on tiger skins, Oriental rugs, and other beauties, barrenness is
easily transformed.

The drawing-room wore a changed aspect, and at a first glance it was to
be seen that in poor little Lady Anstruthers, as she had generally been
called, there was to be noted alteration also. In her case the
change, being in its first stages, could not perhaps be yet called
transformation, but, aided by softly pretty arrangement of dress and
hair, a light in her eyes, and a suggestion of pink under her skin, one
recalled that she had once been a pretty little woman, and that after
all she was only about thirty-two years old.

That her sister, Miss Vanderpoel, had beauty, it was not necessary to
hesitate in deciding. Neither Lord Dunholm nor his wife nor their
son did hesitate. A girl with long limbs an alluring profile, and
extraordinary black lashes set round lovely Irish-blue eyes, possesses
physical capital not to be argued about.

She was not one of the curious, exotic little creatures, whose thin,
though sometimes rather sweet, and always gay, high-pitched young voices
Lord Dunholm had been so especially struck by in the early days of the
American invasion. Her voice had a tone one would be likely to remember
with pleasure. How well she