Arthur had been gone so long and left them in undisputed possession of
the park, that she had come to feel as if it belonged to them by right,
and she had grown so into a life of ease and luxury, that to give it up
now and go back to Langley seemed impossible to her. She could see it
all so plainly--the old life of obscurity and toil in the little kitchen
where she had eaten her breakfast on winter mornings so near the stove
that she could cook her buckwheats on the griddle and transfer them to
her own and her husband's plates without leaving her seat. She had been
happy, or comparatively so there, she said to herself, because she knew
no better. But now she did know better, and she ate her breakfast in an
oak-paneled dining-room, with a waitress at her elbow, and her
buckwheats hot from a silver dish instead of the smoking griddle. She
had a governess for her two boys, Tom and Jack, and a nurse for her
little Maude, who, in her ambitious heart, she hoped would one day marry
Dick St. Clair, the young heir of Grassy Spring.

It never occurred to Dolly that they might possibly remain at the park
if Arthur did come home. She felt sure they could not, for Arthur would
hardly approve of his brother's stewardship when he came to realize how
much it had cost him. They would have to leave, and this party she was
giving would be her first and last at Tracy Park. How she wished she had
never thought of it, or, having thought of it, that she had omitted from
the list those who, she knew, would be obnoxious to the foreign brother,
and who had only been invited for the sake of their political influence,
which would now be useless, for Frank Tracy as a nobody, with very
little money to spend, would not run as well, even in his own party, as
Frank Tracy of Tracy Park, with thousands at his command if he chose to
take them.

'It is too bad, and I wish we could give up the party,' she said aloud,