Two voices, basso and falsetto, were calling through the fog. Two horses were backing and sidling at the steps. Then a tall young woman came laughing and stamping through the open doorway. The magnetism of her bounding vitality touched Florence Essington before she looked; for her first look was to Longacre. He was suddenly brightened, more interested in what he was saying to Cissy Fitz Hugh; and Florence, seeing, had a sensation of loneliness, of desertion, that amounted to antagonism as she turned her eyes to the girl. The feeling ached through her pure pleasure in the other’s extraordinary beauty. Julia was hatless. Her hair, crystalled with mist, stood off her forehead in a glistening bush. That dark, back-brushed nimbus gave the suggestion of some great, fine lady of another day. The magnificent sweep of her black brows seemed to dress her forehead. The blood of her vigorous body burned in her crimson cheeks and lips. She moved in an atmosphere of vital energy. She dominated the room. Her mother seemed scarcely able to keep her hands off her. “Why, _darling_, what is the matter? _Why_ are you so late?” “Awfully sorry, mama. We couldn’t help it. Mr. Thair couldn’t see the face of his watch.—How d’ y’ do, Mrs. Fitz Hugh.—Besides, the ocean was too splendid!” “But where is your hat, pet?” Mrs. Budd still hovered, tender and voluble. “Blew off,” said Julia, blithely. “Mr. Thair tried to find it, and nearly lost himself in the fog. Bless you, mother, we couldn’t see our saddle-pommels!” “Here’s Mr. Longacre,” murmured her mother, remindingly. The girl gave him a full hand-clasp. Her spirits seemed to take another leap. “Why didn’t you come down earlier, Mr. Longacre? We should have given you a run for your money.” “Oh, there’ll be another night like this for me,” said Longacre, with confidence. Mrs. Budd looked at him with dim dismay, but the entrance of Charlie Thair diverted her. Lean, keen, and smiling, his unusually animated, not to say joyous, bearing gave her reassurance. Her eyes traveled to Julia for confirmation, but Julia was disconcertingly oblivious of Thair’s presence. Her vivid gestures and high animation were all for Longacre. Mrs. Budd’s forehead showed a cleft of anxiety not to be erased by her most scrupulous smiles. Among the groups, dispersing to dress for dinner, she tried to reach her daughter; but the girl had been swept up-stairs, the center of a knot of women. The slow-moving Holden detained Mrs. Budd until she had left hardly that allotted time in which the most expeditious woman can be groomed and gowned. But Mrs. Budd was superior to time in point of determination. She hurried her maid to the woman’s distraction, and half an hour before the first of her guests could be expected she knocked at her daughter’s door.