els for the eager
innocence of youth, Laura drew her close and kissed her. "My sweet,
I'm so glad," she whispered. A bright blush was Isabel's only answer.
Then Mrs. Clowes stepped back and indicated her cavalier, very big
and handsome in white clothes and a Panama hat: "May I introduce--
Captain Hyde, Miss Stafford," with a delicate formality which
thrilled Isabel to her finger-tips. Let him see if he would call her
a little girl now!

Lawrence recognized Isabel at a glance, but he was not abashed.
He scarcely gave her a second thought till he had satisfied
himself that Val Stafford was not present. Lawrence smiled, not
at all surprised: he had had a presentiment that Val, the modest
easy-going Val of his recollections, would be detained at
Countisford: too modest by half, if he was shy of meeting an old
friend! Rowsley Stafford was doing the honours and came forward
to be introduced to Lawrence, a ceremony remarkable only because
they both took an instantaneous dislike to each other. Lawrence
disliked Rowsley because he was young and well-meaning and the
child of a parsonage, and Rowsley disliked Lawrence because a
manner which owed some of its serenity to his physical advantages,
and his tailor, and his income, irritated the susceptibilities of
the poor man's son.

Poor men's sons were often annoyed by Lawrence Hyde's manner.
Not so Jack Bendish, sprawling in a deck chair which had no
sound pair of notches: not so his wife, Laura's sister, Yvonne of
the Castle, curled up on a moth-eaten tigerskin rug, and clad in
raiment of brown and silver which even Mr. Stafford would not
have credited to Chapman's General Drapery and Grocery Stores.
Isabel was innocently surprised when the Bendishes found they had
met Captain Hyde in town. Laura's smile was very faintly tinged
with bitterness: she knew of that small world where every one
meets every one, though she had been barred out of it most of her
life, first by her disreputable father and then by the tragedy of
her marriage: Rowsley pulled his tooth-brush moustache and said
nothing. He was young, but not so young as Isabel, and there
were moments when he felt his own footing at the Castle to be
vaguely anomalous.

However, the talk ran easily. Lawrence, as was inevitable, sat
down by Yvonne Bendish: she did not raise an eyelash to summon
him, but it seemed to be a natural law that the rich unmarried
man should sit beside her and talk cosmopolitan scandal, and s