Joan seldom called him up now, and she was hardly ever at home, at Holly. For the few weeks before leaving for Switzerland she was accepting invitations to house parties; so Hugh saw little of her. Then, one day toward the middle of June, he received an invitation to a week-end house party himself, at Fernly, Mrs. Ronald Hunt-Smith’s place on Long Island. As he barely knew the lady, having met her only once, at Holly, and then only for a minute at one of Joan’s larger teas, he rightly attributed his invitation to Joan’s persuasions. Rather to his own surprise, he decided against going. The invitation was in reality, he knew, an indirect promise from Joan that they should have some long hours together at Fernly, for surely she would never have bothered to secure so unlikely an invitation for him unless she meant to manage to give him a good deal of her time there, as a farewell before her departure for the summer. But even this assurance did not seem inducement enough to Hugh, in the new directions his life had taken this spring, to make him willing to face a household of uncongenial strangers. Before he had sent his regrets, however, he learned from Brenda that she too was included in this house party. “I suppose you’re asked for Joan,” she said, frankly annoyed at the idea. “And I sha’n’t see anything of you. I don’t believe I’ll go. Oh, yes, but I must, of course. Business! Mrs. Ronald Hunt-Smith may have a drawing-room or a boudoir that needs doing over. And there’ll be a dozen or so women of her own sort there, I suppose, with drawing-rooms just as terrible which I can fix. No. I can’t afford to turn it down, you see. But, Hugh, will you be a little decent to me, please? I shall be lost among the bigwigs. They _are_ bigwigs, you know. Not just money, but diplomacy and high finance. All that. You’ll remember that we’re pals—promise?” “Oh, but I hadn’t meant to go. I was going to ask you to come out to Wild Acres for the week-end instead. Mother is writing you to-night. But you prefer magnificence and bigwigs?” “You know I don’t. And I’ll come to Wild Acres any other week-end you ask me, with joy. I think your mother is too lovely, to want me. I couldn’t take my eyes from her at the Clare exhibition. I think I like her already without knowing her, Hugh. But you will come to Fernly? Say you will?” Her eyes were wistful and pleading. And so, oddly enough, Hugh found himself yielding to Brenda Loring’s persuasions, where Joan’s invisible but encouraging beckon had failed. However, if he had allowed himself to follow his own desires, he would have preferred Wild Acres as a place to spend any Saturday and Sunday. Yes. Even if Ariel must always be in the next room, writing letters to Glenn. Chapter XXVI