Not many minutes later they were walking briskly up the avenue leading to French Cross. The old château was brilliantly lighted. Miss Gastonguay loved to entertain the people who pleased her, and Prosperity, throwing the door wide open to Derrice and her husband, begged them to walk up-stairs, where his brother Tribulation smilingly assigned them to respective dressing-rooms, and presented Derrice with a loosely tied bunch of carnations.
Derrice, in secret amusement, was obliged to summon her husband to her assistance, in arranging a refractory ruffle.
"Why is it," she whispered as he gropingly tried to fasten a pin over one of her smooth shoulder-blades, "that one sees no women servants about this house?"
"Because," he whispered back, "Miss Gastonguay is a rabid champion for men. She says one hears nothing but arrangements for women's homes and asylums, and women's work of all kinds, and she believes in looking out for some of the neglected ones."
Derrice put her flowers to her diverted face, and together they went down-stairs.
The night was an unpleasant one, and the sight in the drawing-room was one calculated to cheer two people who had just struggled through the mud of the avenue.
The long room was flooded with soft lamplight. Chelda, sinuous and graceful, was standing on the white fur hearth-rug, talking to a tall, lanky young man with a sallow face, whom Derrice knew to be Capt. Sam Veevers,—his title a legacy from a brief time of service in one of the regiments of his native State of Kentucky.
Mr. Huntington was in a far corner of the room, his hands crossed behind him, his resplendent head shining against a white window curtain, as he talked to Aurelia Sinclair.
Derrice was glad that she had not worn her gleaming satin. Neither Mr. Huntington nor Captain Veevers was in evening dress. Aurelia wore an old-fashioned, high-necked purple "silk shiver" gown, Miss Chelda one of figured velvet, while Miss Gastonguay had on a kind of men's smoking jacket.
"Well, young people," she said, coming forward, watch in hand, "you are five minutes late. A bad way to begin your married life."