ontinued his
carving.

CHAPTER IX

CONFESSION

So many guests were arriving from Iron Hill, Cloudy Mountain, and West
Gate Village that the capacity of Roya-Neh was overtaxed. Room had to be
made somehow; Geraldine and Naida Mallett doubled up; twin beds were
installed for Dysart and Bunny Gray; Rosalie took in Sylvia Quest with a
shrug, disdaining any emotion, even curiosity, concerning the motherless
girl whose imprudences with Jack Dysart had furnished gossip sufficient
to last over from the winter.

The Tappans appeared with their guests, old Tappan grimmer, rustier,
gaunter than usual; his son and heir, Peter--he of the rambling and
casual legs--more genial, more futile, more acquiescent than ever. The
Crays, Beckmans, Ellises, and Grandcourts arrived; Catharine Grandcourt
shared Mrs. Severn's room; Scott Seagrave went to quarters at the West
Gate, and Duane was driven forth and a cot-bed set up for him in his
studio at Hurryon Lodge.

The lawns and terraces of Roya-Neh were swarming with eager, laughing
young people; white skirts fluttered everywhere in the sun;
tennis-courts and lake echoed with the gay tumult, motors tooted, smart
horses and showy traps were constantly drawing up or driving off; an
army of men from West Gate Village were busy stringing lanterns all over
the grounds, pitching pavilions in the glade beyond Hurryon Gate, and
decorating everything with ribbons, until Duane suggested to Scott that
they tie silk bows on the wild squirrels, as everything ought to be as
Louis XVI as possible. He himself did actually so adorn several
respectable Shanghai hens which he caught at their oviparous duties, and
the spectacle left Kathleen weak with laughter.

As for Duane, he suddenly seemed to have grown years younger. All that
was careless, inconsequential, irresponsible, seemed to have disappeared
in a single night, leaving a fresh, boyish enthusiasm quite free from
surface cynicism--quite innocent of the easy, amused mockery which had
characterised him. The subtle element of self-consciousness had
disappeared, too. If it had remained unnoticed, even undetected before,
now its absence was noticeable, for there was no longer any attitude
about him, no policy to sustain, nothing of that humourous, bantering
sophistication which ignores conventionality. For it is always a
conscious effort to ignore it, an attitude to disregard what custom has
sanctioned.

Kathleen had never realised what a re