He breaks off at this interesting juncture, and, fixing his glass in his best eye, stares at a figure coming slowly towards them from the house. They all follow his gaze, and find themselves criticising the approaching form in a vague, surprised fashion. "Great hat! look at Julia!" says Dicky, at last, giving way to speech that will not be repressed. The exclamation is quite in keeping with the scene. Julia, in a head gear of the style usually described as a Rubens, of the very largest description, comes simpering up to them, filled with the belief that now, if ever, she is looking her very best. "Great" _is_ the word for it. She is indeed all that. "My dear Julia, where have you been!" says Dulce, ignoring the hat. "Searching every room in the house for that last book of Ouida's," says Julia, promptly, who has in reality been posing before a mirror in her own room, crowned with a Rubens. "I'm always losing my things, you know--and my way; my boat, for example, and my train, and my umbrella." She is plainly impressed with the belief that she is saying something smart, and looks conscious of it. "Why don't you add your temper," says Dicky Browne, with a mild smile--which rather spoils the effect of her would-be smartness. "We were talking about our ball," says Dulce, somewhat quickly. "Dicky seems to think that we shall lose caste in the neighborhood if we put it off much longer." "You'll create ill feeling," says Mr. Browne. "The Stanley girls have new gowns, and they want to show them. They'll say nasty things about you." "That's your second hint on that subject," says Sir Mark. "Get it out, Dicky, you are dying to say something. What was it you were going to say a few minutes ago about some fellow who--?" "Who for seven years was going to give a ball, and was asked everywhere on the strength of it. His friends hoped against hope, don't you see, but nothing ever came of it. At the end of the seven years he was as far off it as ever." "And what did his friends do to him then," asks Julia, who is one of those people who always want _more_ than enough. "Deponent sayeth not," says Mr. Browne. "Perhaps it was too dark a tale for publication. I suppose they either smote him between the joints of his harness till he died, or else they fell upon him in a body and rent him in pieces." "What nonsense you can talk at times," says Mrs. Beaufort, mindful of his speech of a few moments ago. "Not I," says Dicky Browne. It is about four o'clock, and already the shadows are lengthening upon the grass, the soft, cool grass upon which they are all sitting beneath the shade of the huge chestnut trees, that fling their branches in all directions, some east, some west, some heavenwards.