"Then if the house isn't full of people, all I can say is there's a good deal of candlelight going to waste," said Captain Vandeleur. They were driving up to the porch by this time; the door stood wide open; servants were on the watch for them. The hall was all aglow with light and fire; people were moving about near the hearth. It was a relief to Leonard to see this life and brightness. He had feared to find a dark and silent house--a melancholy welcome--all things still in mourning for the untimely dead. A ripple of laughter floated from the hall as Leonard drew up his horses, and two tall slim figures with fluffy heads, short-waisted gowns, and big sashes, came skipping down the broad shallow steps. "My sisters, by Jove," cried Jack, delighted. "How awfully jolly of Mrs. Tregonell to invite them." Leonard's only salutation to the damsels was a friendly nod. He brushed by them as they grouped themselves about their brother--like a new edition of Laocoon without the snakes, or the three Graces without the grace--and hurried into the hall, eager to be face to face with his wife. She came forward to meet him, looking her loveliest, dressed as he had never seen her dressed before, with a style, a _chic_, and a daring more appropriate to the Théâtre Français than to a Cornish squire's house. She who, even in the height of the London season, had been simplicity itself, recalling to those who most admired her, the picture of that chaste and unworldly maiden who dwelt beside the Dove, now wore an elaborate costume of brown velvet and satin, in which a Louis Quinze velvet coat, with large cut-steel buttons and Mechlin _jabot_, was the most striking feature. Her fair, soft hair was now fluffy, and stood up in an infinity of frizzy curls from the broad white forehead. Diamond solitaires flashed in her ears, her hands glittered with the rainbow light of old family rings, which in days gone by she had been wont to leave in the repose of an iron safe. The whole woman was changed. She came to meet her husband with a Society smile; shook hands with him as if he had been a commonplace visitor--he was too startled to note the death-like coldness of that slender hand--and welcomed him with a conventional inquiry about his passage from Buenos Ayres.