"Yes, titles and fortunes must go," remarked our hostess with a smile as
she rose from the table and led the way out on the sunny, stone-flagged
terrace. Below us was a wide parterre whose flower-beds, laid out by a
celebrated landscape-gardener in the days of the Stuarts, were filled
with vegetables. The day was like our New England Indian summerthough
the trees were still heavy with leaves--and a gossamer-blue veil of haze
stained the hills between which the shining river ran. If the social
revolution, or evolution, takes place, one wonders what will become of
this long-cherished beauty.

I venture to dwell upon one more experience of that week-end party. The
Friday evening of my arrival I was met at the station, not by a limousine
with a chauffeur and footman, but by a young woman with a taxicab--one of
the many reminders that a war is going on. London had been reeking in a
green-yellow fog, but here the mist was white, and through it I caught
glimpses of the silhouettes of stately trees in a park, and presently saw
the great house with its clock-tower looming up before me. A fire was
crackling in the hall, and before it my hostess was conversing amusedly
with a well-known sculptor--a sculptor typical of these renaissance
times, large, full-blooded, with vigorous opinions on all sorts of
matters.

"A lecturer is coming down from London to talk to the wounded in the
amusement-hall of the hospital," our hostess informed us. "And you both
must come and speak too."

The three of us got into the only motor of which the establishment now
boasts, a little runabout using a minimum of "petrol," and she guided us
rapidly by devious roads through the fog until a blur of light proclaimed