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166 They had walked their horses slowly to the west end of the mile by now, and Lucia looked longingly down the broad brown ribbon of it. But she shook her head; the sun was already high and had wiped the washed face of the earth; it was time to get to work again.

"I long, I just long for another gallop," she said, "but I am late already. Do get Maud to come out to-morrow, and let us start at half -past seven. We shall get an hour then. Good-bye, Charlie; we shall meet again somewhere, I suppose, in the course of a few minutes."

"Mayn't I ride home with you?" asked he.

"No, I think not," said she. "It would be a pity. We should have to bawl remarks at each other if we talked at all in these roaring streets. Remember to tell Maud about Baireuth."

Though beyond doubt the New Set, such as it was, had been invented and prophesied by Lucia three years ago, Lady Heron, in spite of Lucia's demur, was more right than Edgar when she said that his wife had only precipitated it. For just as in Brixham, in the days of the lean years, so here, on a larger stage and with greater luxury of appointment, Lucia had done no more than to make herself a rallying point. She had, so to speak, the quality of centrality; whether at Newnham or at Brixham or in Prince's Gate, she was apt to be in the middle of a group, not revolving round others. Nor was that strange; with her charm, her position, her beauty, her brilliant vitality, it was small wonder that where wealth alone can do so much, she easily and without effort made herself a very central situation. The initiative instinct of the world did the rest: for two years she and her husband had been known to be on a pilgrimage of culture (on board a most luxurious yacht), and culture this year became a craze, especially when it was seen how delightful the pursuit of culture was. For it was still more than permissible, it was even desirable, to go much to the Opera, to attend concerts, to stroll about the National Gallery or the Tate, the spacious halls of which were much cooler and more airy in this torrid weather than the middle-class suffocation of the Academy. Dress, again, was by no means beneath the notice of the cultured; indeed, in the chase of beauty it was incumbent on its huntresses to be exquisite: they had to realize as completely as they could in themselves the ideals at which they aimed. Even the palate, too, must share in the education of the senses,