arriving. As she flew, she cast one more glance at the famous puce-coloured silk, and warmly congratulated herself. She had done it so neatly, too—had hurt nobody's feelings.
Aunt Cathie sat and looked at her fire when Lucia had gone for some pleasant retrospective minutes. It was all too wonderful to think that all this was Lucia's; that this great houseful of people was being entertained by her niece. She did it all, too, as if she had been borne to it; she shrieked with laughter when a peer of the realm fell down on the corridor, and shouted chaffing remarks to a Duchess. Indeed, it had been worth a week's anxiety about dresses to see this. And everybody was so young, and in such childishly high spirits, and the women were so beautiful, and the house was so splendid. And yet Lucia was just the same, and, in spite of all the duchesses and lords, came and chatted to her aunt in her bedroom. But Aunt Cathie wished she would not smoke; if she could find an opportunity, she would speak to her about it.
Her clock—rather a shocking clock, with a bronze lady with hardly any clothes on talking to a bronze gentleman in an equally insufficient costume—chimed eight, and Aunt Cathie, who had not known it was so late, rang the bell for her maid, with a little thrill at the novel dignity. Arbuthnot appeared with hot water, looking a little dazed.
"Well" said Aunt Cathie, "this is a grand house, isn't it, Arbuthnot? And her ladyship remembered you, and said she must speak to you."
Arbuthnot gave a little choking sigh.
"And to think that dinner's over by now at home, miss," she said.
For one moment, at the thought of the crowd of laughing, jesting people who knew each other so well, and of whom she did not even know the names, a little pang of home-sickness came over Aunt Cathie at the image suggested by Arbuthnot of Elizabeth sitting down to her patience in the drawing-room at home, but she instantly shook it off.
"Well, I'm glad dinner isn't over here," she said, "becaus I'm as hungry as I am at Littlestone. Oh, and her ladyship thinks the puce silk, perhaps, is too grand. So I will wear"
At that moment critical Cathie's eye fell on its shimmering folds, its sleeveless splendour, its lace insertions, and the temptation was irresistible. To be grander than duchesses! To make them all feel that they had scrubby country frocks on, so that
