Clara had.  She was taking a farewell look at herself in the far-away mirror through the door into her bedroom.  It was a mistake—­ she added—­to suppose that women were not interested in ‘the Land.’  Lady Britto was most intelligent, and Mildred Malloring knew every cottage on her estate.

“Pokes her nose into ’em often enough,” Stanley muttered.

Lady Fanfar again, and Mrs. Sleesor, and even Hilda Martlett, were interested in their husbands, and Miss Bawtrey, of course, interested in everything.  As for Maude Ughtred, all talk would be the same to her; she was always week-ending.  Stanley need not worry—­it would be all right; some real work would get done, some real advance be made.  So saying, she turned her fine shoulders twice, once this way and once that, and went out.  She had never told even Stanley her ambition that at Becket, under her aegis, should be laid the foundation-stone of the real scheme, whatever it might be, that should regenerate ‘the Land.’  Stanley would only have laughed; even though it would be bound to make him Lord Freeland when it came to be known some day. . . .

To the eyes and ears of Nedda that evening at dinner, all was new indeed, and all wonderful.  It was not that she was unaccustomed to society or to conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many people came, uttering many words, but both the people and the words were so very different.  After the first blush, the first reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs between whom she sat, her eyes would stray and her ears would only half listen to them.  Indeed, half her ears, she soon found out, were quite enough to deal with Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar.  Across the azaleas she let her glance come now and again to anchor on her father’s face, and exchanged with him a most enjoyable blink.  She tried once or twice to get through to Alan, but he was always eating; he looked very like a young Uncle Stanley this evening.

What was she feeling?  Short, quick stabs of self-consciousness as to how she was looking; a sort of stunned excitement due to sheer noise and the number of things offered to her to eat and drink; keen pleasure in the consciousness that Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar and other men, especially that nice one with the straggly moustache who looked as if he were going to bite, glanced at her when they saw she wasn’t looking.  If only she had been quite certain that it was not because they thought her too young to be there!  She felt a sort of continual exhilaration, that this was the great world—­the world where important things were said and done, together with an intense listening expectancy, and a sense most unexpected and almost frightening, that nothing important was being said or would be done.  But this she knew to be impudent.  On Sunday evenings at home people talked about a future existence, about Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Chinese pictures, post-impressionism, and would suddenly grow hot and furious about peace,