The first sight of Elizabeth Darrell had impressed him wonderfully, and the second vision of her had determined him to renew his acquaintance with General Brandon; and while he was turning the mode of this over in his mind he was summoned to luncheon. At luncheon all of the family assembled—Élise and Lydia in elaborate negligées, Anne simply but properly dressed. She sat next her mother at the table and was that poor creature’s only outspoken champion. “So you had a nice morning, with the psalm–singing and all that,” said Élise to Anne. “Very nice,” replied Anne. “Mamma seemed to enjoy it very much.” “We had a nice morning, too,” replied Élise. “The Brentwood–Baldwins glared at us as we went into church; they will never forgive us for getting that pew in the middle aisle, so close to the President’s. Then, after church, Count Rosalka asked to walk home with me. Lydia got Laurison, the new British third secretary; so we sent the carriage on and walked out Connecticut Avenue with all the Seventh Street shopkeepers. It was very amusing, though.” “It must have been,” said Clavering, gravely. “You must have recalled the time when you would have thought yourself as rich as Pierpont Morgan and Rockefeller combined if you had been as well dressed as a Seventh Street shopkeeper’s daughter. It was only twelve years ago, you remember, since I struck pay dirt in mines and politics.” Élise and Lydia both smiled pleasantly. They were their father’s own daughters, and along with many of his vices they inherited his superb good humor, which never gave way except to a preconcerted burst of imposing wrath. “I remember those days quite well,” said Anne. Her voice, as well as her looks, was quite different from her sisters’. Instead of their rich and sensuous tones, beautiful like their father’s, Anne’s voice had a dovelike quality of cooing softness; but she could always make herself heard. “I remember,” she continued, touching her mother’s coarse hand outspread on the table, “when mamma used to make our gowns, and we looked quite as nice as the girls who could afford to have their clothes made by a dressmaker.” “Them was happy days,” said Mrs. Clavering. It was her only remark during luncheon. They talked of their plans for the coming week, as people do to whom pleasure and leisure are new and intoxicating things. Anne was plied with questions about Mrs. Luttrell’s dinner. She told freely all about it, being secretive only concerning Baskerville, merely mentioning that he was present. “A more toploftical, stuck–up F. F. V.—or F. F. M., I suppose he is—I never saw than this same Mr. Baskerville, and as dull as ditchwater besides,” said Lydia. Here Reginald spoke. “Mr. Baskerville is very highly esteemed by the bishop of the diocese,” he said.