Claudia received her friends with bright smiles and gay words. She complimented them on their good looks and rallied them on their gravity. And then she let them lightly pass away to make room for new arrivals, who were approaching to pay their respects. They passed through the crowd until they found Judge Merlin, to whose care Mr. Middleton consigned Bee, while he himself, with his wife on his arm, made a tour of all the rooms, including the supper room. The party, they saw, was going to be a successful one, notwithstanding the fact that the three great metropolitan ministers of fashion had nothing whatever to do with it. Sam and Jim, with perfect liberty to do their worst in the matters of garden flowers and wax lights, had decorated and illuminated the rooms with the rich profusion for which the negro servants are notorious. The guests might have been in fairy groves and bowers, instead of drawing rooms, for any glimpse of walls or ceilings they could get through green boughs and blooming flowers. In the supper room old Aunt Katie with her attendant nymphs had laid a feast that might vie in "toothsomeness" if not in elegance with the best ever elaborated by the celebrated caterer. And in the dancing room the local band of negro musicians drew from their big fiddle, little fiddle, banjo, and bones notes as ear- piercing and limb-lifting, if not as scientific and artistic, as anything ever executed by Dureezie's renowned troupe. The Englishman, secretly cynical, sneered at all this; but openly courteous, made himself agreeable to all the prettiest of the country belles, who ever after had the proud boast of having quadrilled or waltzed with Lord Vincent. The party did not break up until morning. The reason of this was obvious--the company could not venture to return home in their carriages over those dangerous country roads until daylight. It was, in fact, sunrise before the last guests departed and the weary family were at liberty to go to bed and sleep. They had turned the night into day, and now it was absolutely necessary to turn the day into night. They did not any of them awake until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when they took coffee in their chambers. And they did not reassemble until the late dinner hour at six o'clock, by which time the servants had removed the litter of the party and restored the rooms to neatness, order, and comfort. The Middletons had not departed with the other guests. They joined the family at dinner. And after dinner, at the pressing invitation of Judge Merlin, they agreed to remain at Tanglewood for the few days that would intervene before the departure of Lord and Lady Vincent for Europe. Only Bee, the next morning, drove over to the Beacon to give the servants there strict charges in regard to the girls and boys, and to bring little Lu back with her to Tanglewood. The next week was passed in making the final preparations for the voyage.