"Jack Ashton. You know him, don't you?" replied Howard-Jones. "He has the place just beyond Harry's."
"I ought to," said Duncan. "He was in my class at college. I didn't recognize him, though."
"Do you always forget your friends so easily?" said Helen Osgood with an ironical sparkle in her blue-black eyes.
"Sometimes I try to," Duncan answered.
"Are you always successful?" she asked.
"No, Helen," he whispered, "not always."
The trap had reached the stone gateway of the Osgood place. As they turned in, a call was sounded on the horn to announce their coming to the servants, and, after passing the lodge, they could see the low, white country house, with rambling wings and numerous stables and outhouses in the rear, standing on a rise of ground at the end of the winding road. The place had been in the Osgood family for more than a hundred years. The oak-covered grounds about the house, and the green, rolling lawn in front, were typical of an English park; but the old wooden, colonial house, with its rambling additions and green blinds, its stately veranda and Doric columned portico, was American, of a type fast disappearing before the modern house decorator with his tints and bibelots.
The trap dashed up to the door, a knot of servants appeared, the grooms placed the ladder against the steps, and the guests alighted and were conducted to their apartments, where, for the next hour, the house party was occupied in the task of dressing for dinner.