iii

"Dinner is served, ma'am," said the pretty maid, at the door. They all moved forward, leaving Percy at his toilet and losing Pulcinella en route.

Patricia, leading the way with Mrs. Mayne, saw the dining room with a friendly and interested eye; and as the chairs and sideboard were all of old mahogany, she supposed herself to be amid the relics of Mr. and Mrs. Mayne's early married life. The room was large and lofty, and the mahogany furniture suited it, so much did the shape and arrangement of everything accord. It was very different from the drawing room, where the note had been a light grey, with loose covers of flowered chintz upon the more comfortable seats and curtains of a shade warmer than that which otherwise prevailed. Here in the dining room the curtains were dark and the gas-shades mellow in tone. Everything was subdued. It was an "old" room, not at all what she would have expected from her quick imagination of Claudia's taste. Well, that was a puzzle the more. Involuntarily she shook her head. In this house the older people counted more heavily than she could have expected. The younger ones were not all-powerful. She guessed that the drawing room represented the farthest concession Mrs. Mayne would make to modernity; and it was already fifteen years out of date. She did not realise that it heralded the coming revival of Liberty in house-decoration.

Her insight was gone as quickly as it had come. Patricia hardly knew what had been her impression, so much less apt was she in thought than in intuitive knowledge. She was still charmed; but she knew that Mrs. Mayne also was in the habit of going her own way. It was a family habit. Patricia could not restrain a half-glance at the whiskered Mr. Mayne, who sat with such benignant fierceness at the head of the table. Was his pictorial ferocity merely a compensation? Or was his mildness the serenity of a dictator? Perhaps even Mr. Mayne.... She was deeply and childishly impressed. For an instant her self-assurance trembled. Patricia, of course, was unquestionably Patricia and in that respect unique; but could there possibly be other people—other real people—than Patricia in the world? It had seemed in that very uncomfortable instant as though there might be four others. With something like panic, she raised her spoon from the table.