"Why not?" said Richard. "It is a bright, bracing day, and there is something exhilarating in driving from house to house, to find one's self greeted at each by a roomful of charming women,—most of them pretty, some of them brilliant, all of them well dressed and in holiday spirits. It is delightful."
"Do you find it delightful?" inquired Planefield, turning with some abruptness to Tredennis.
"I am obliged to own that I don't shine in society," answered Tredennis.
He knew there was nothing to resent in the question, but he was conscious of resenting something in the man himself. His big, prosperous-looking body and darkly florid face, with its heavy, handsome outlines, and keen, bold eyes, had impressed him unpleasantly from the first, and on each occasion of their meeting the impression seemed to deepen.
"Well, Amory shines," was his response, "and so does Mrs. Amory. We are to drop in and see her shine, as often as we happen to be in the neighborhood through the day."
They had reached the threshold of the reception-room by this time, and Richard, catching the last words, turned and spoke.
"Of course you will be there yourself in the course of the day," he said. "We shall possibly meet you—and, by-the-by, you will see Mrs. Sylvestre. She arrived two days ago."
When they came out again Richard was in more buoyant spirits than before. The lighted rooms, the brilliant dresses, the many faces he knew or did not know, the very crush itself, had acted upon him like a fine wind. He issued forth into the light of day again, girded and eager for his day's work.
"There is nothing like Washington," he announced, "and especially nothing like Washington at the beginning of the season. Just at the outset, when one is meeting people for the first time since their return, they actually have the air of being glad to see one, and a man has a delightful evanescent sense of being somehow positively popular."