Then she had to face the return to Bursley, and, later, the At Home which Louis propounded as a matter of course, and which she knew to be inevitable. The house was her toy, and Mrs. Tams was her toy. But the glee of playing with toys had been overshadowed for days by the delicious dread of the At Home. “It will be the first caller that will kill me,” she had said. “But will anybody really come?” And the first caller had called. And, finding herself still alive, she had become radiant, and often during the afternoon had forgotten to be clumsy. The success of the At Home was prodigious, startling. Now and then when the room was full, and people without chairs perched on the end of the Chesterfield, she had whispered to her secret heart in a tiny, tiny voice: “These are my guests. They all treat me with special deference. I am the hostess. I am Mrs. Fores.” The Batchgrew clan was well represented, no doubt by order from authority, Mrs. Yardley came, in surprising stylishness. Visitors arrived from Knype. Miss Malkin came and atoned for her historic glance in the shop. But the dazzlers were sundry male friends of Louis, with Kensingtonian accents, strange phrases, and assurance in the handling of teacups and the choosing of cake.... One by one and two by two they had departed, and at last Rachel, with a mind as it were breathless from rapid flittings to and fro, was seated alone on the sofa.