Walking with stately steps up the great staircase of Halnakeham Castle, Mrs. Boringdon became at once conscious that her party had arrived most unfashionably early, and she felt annoyed with Mrs. Rebell for having brought about so regrettable a _contretemps_. While apparently gazing straight before her, she noticed that her present fellow-guests were in no sense representative of the county; they evidently consisted of folk, who, like Barbara, had known no better, and had taken the ducal invitation as literally meaning that the Duchess expected her guests to arrive at half-past nine!
Mrs. Boringdon accordingly made her progress as slow as she could, while Lucy, just behind her, looked about and enjoyed the animated scene. The girl felt happier than she had done for a long time; Oliver's manner had again become full of affectionate intimacy, and she had experienced an instinctive sense of relief in witnessing Mrs. Rebell's manner to him. A woman, even one so young as Lucy Kemp, does not mistake a rival's manner to the man she loves.
At last, thanks to a little manoeuvre on the part of the older lady, she and Lucy, with, of course, her son, became separated from Mrs. Rebell. Barbara was soon well in front, speeding up the staircase with the light sliding gait Oliver so much admired, and forming part of, though in no sense merged in, the stream of rather awe-struck folk about her.
The kindly Duchess, standing a little in front of a brilliant, smiling group of men and women, stood receiving her guests on the landing which formed a vestibule to the long gallery leading to the ball-room. There came a moment when Barbara Rebell--so Boringdon felt--passed out of the orbit of those with whom she had just had the silent drive, and became absorbed into that stationary little island of people at the top of the staircase. More, as he and his mother shook hands with the Duchess, he saw that the woman who now filled his heart and mind to the exclusion of almost everything else, was standing rather in the background, between James Berwick and an old gentleman whom he, Oliver Boringdon, had long known and always disliked, a certain Septimus Daman who knew everyone and was asked everywhere.