“Yon might at least have stopped to change your shoes,” Aunt Claudia told her, as they left the house behind.

“I was out with Randy and the dogs.  It was heavenly, Aunt Claudia.”

“My dear, if a walk with Randy is heavenly, what will you call Heaven when you get to it?”

They drove through the first gate, and Calvin climbed down to open it.  Beyond the gate the road descended gradually through an open pasture, where sheep grazed on the hillside or lay at rest in the shade.  The bells of the leaders tinkled faintly, the ewes and the lambs were calling.  Beyond the big gate, the highroad was washed with the recent rains.  From the gate to the club was a matter of five miles, and the bays ate up the distance easily.

The people on the porch of the Country Club were very gay and gorgeous, so that Becky in her careless frock and shabby shoes would have been a pitiful contrast if she had cared in the least what the people on the porch thought of her.  But she did not care.  She nodded and smiled to a friend or two as the Judge stopped for a moment in the crush of motors.

George Dalton was on the porch.  When he saw Becky he leaned forward for a good look at her.

“Some girl,” he said to Waterman, as the surrey moved on, “the one in the sailor hat.  Who is she?”

Oscar Waterman was a newcomer in Albemarle.  He had bought a thousand acres, with an idea of grafting on to Southern environment his own ideas of luxurious living.  The county families had not called, but he was not yet aware of his social isolation.  He was rich, and most of the county families were poor—­from his point of view the odds were in his favor—­and it was never hard to get guests.  He could always motor up to Washington and New York, and bring a crowd back with him.  His cellars were well stocked, and his hospitality undiscriminating.

“I don’t know the girl,” he told Dalton, “but the old man is Judge Bannister.  He’s one of the natives—­no money and oodles of pride.”

In calling Judge Bannister a “native,” Oscar showed a lack of proportion.  A native, in the sense that he used the word, is a South Sea Islander, indigenous but negligible.  Oscar was fooled, you see, by the Judge’s old-fashioned clothes, and the high surrey, and the horses with the flowing tails.  His ideas of life had to do with motor cars and mansions, and with everybody very much dressed up.  He felt that the only thing in the world that really counted was money.  If you had enough of it the world was yours!

II

Year after year the Bannisters of Huntersfield had eaten their Horse Show luncheon under a clump of old oaks beneath which the horses now stopped.  The big trees were dropping golden leaves in the dryness.  From the rise of the hill one looked down on the grandstand and the crowd as from the seats of an amphitheater.