They swung carelessly out of their saddles and set spurred foot to turf, and, with Garret and his guests, sauntered into the big living hall, where a maid waited with wine and biscuits and the housekeeper lingered to conduct Thessalie and Dulcie to their rooms.
Dulcie Soane, in her pretty travelling gown, walked beside Mrs. Reginald Barres into the first great house she had ever entered. Composed, but shyly enchanted, an odd but delightful sensation possessed her that she was where she belonged—that such environment, such people should always have been familiar to her—were logical and familiar to her now.
Mrs. Barres was saying:
“And if you like parties, there is always gaiety at Northbrook. But you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything you don’t wish to.”
Dulcie said, diffidently, that she liked everything, and Mrs. Barres laughed.
“Then you’ll be very popular,” she said, tossing her riding crop onto the table and stripping off her wet gloves.
Barres senior was already in serious confab with 294 Westmore concerning piscatorial conditions, the natural low water of midsummer, the capricious conduct of the trout in the streams and in the upper and lower lakes.
“They won’t look at anything until sunset,” he explained, “and then they don’t mean business. You’ll see, Jim. I’m sorry; you should have come in June.”
Lee, Garret’s boyishly slim sister, had already begun to exchange opinions about horses with Thessalie, for both had been familiar with the saddle since childhood, though the latter’s Cossack horsemanship and mastery of the haute école, incident to her recent and irregular profession, might have astonished Lee Barres.
Mrs. Barres was saying to Dulcie: