ut going definitely into
her reasons, these festivals had gradually become distasteful to her.
Perhaps it would be fairer to look at them through the eyes of Lily
Dallam, who was in her element on such days, and regarded them as the
most innocent and enjoyable of occasions, and perhaps they were.

The view from the veranda, at least, appealed to our heroine's artistic
sense. The marshes in the middle distance, the shimmering sea beyond, and
the polo field laid down like a vast green carpet in the foreground;
while the players, in white breeches and bright shirts, on the agile
little horses that darted hither and thither across the turf lent an
added touch of colour and movement to the scene. Amongst them, Trixton
Brent most frequently caught the eye and held it. Once Honora perceived
him flying the length of the field, madly pursued, his mallet poised
lightly, his shirt bulging in the wind, his close-cropped head bereft of
a cap, regardless of the havoc and confusion behind him. He played,
indeed, with the cocksureness and individuality one might have expected;
and Honora, forgetting at moments the disturbing elements by which she
was surrounded, followed him with fascination. Occasionally his name
rippled from one end of the crowded veranda to the other, and she
experienced a curious and uncomfortable sensation when she heard it in
the mouths of these strangers.

From time to time she found herself watching them furtively, comparing
them unconsciously with her Quicksands friends. Some of them she had
remarked before, at contests of a minor importance, and they seemed to
her to possess a certain distinction that was indefinable. They had come
to-day from many mysterious (and therefore delightful) places which
Honora knew only by name, and some had driven the twenty-five odd miles
from the bunting community of Banbury in coaches and even those new and
marvellous importations--French automobiles. When the game had ended, and
Lily Dallam was cajoling the club steward to set her tea-table at once, a
group of these visitors halted on the lawn, talking and laughing gayly.
Two of the younger men Honora recognized with a start, but for a moment
she could not place them--until suddenly she remembered that she had seen
them on her wedding trip at Hot Springs. The one who lisped was Mr.
Cuthbert, familiarly known as "Toots": the other, taller and slimmer and
paler, was Jimmy Wing. A third, the regularity of whose features made one