On the day she left London, Herminia thought to herself she had
never seen her child look so absolutely lovely. The unwonted union
of blue eyes with that olive-gray skin gave a tinge of wayward
shyness to her girlish beauty. The golden locks had ripened to
nut-brown, but still caught stray gleams of nestling sunlight.
'Twas with a foreboding regret that Herminia kissed Dolly on both
peach-bloom cheeks at parting. She almost fancied her child must
be slipping from her motherly grasp when she went off so blithely
to visit these unknown friends, away down in Dorsetshire. Yet
Dolly had so few amusements of the sort young girls require that
Herminia was overjoyed this opportunity should have come to her.
She reproached herself not a little in her sensitive heart for even
feeling sad at Dolly's joyous departure. Yet to Dolly it was a
delight to escape from the atmosphere of Herminia's lodgings.
Those calm heights chilled her.
The Compsons' house was quite as "grand" in the reality as Dolly
had imagined it. There was a man-servant in a white tie to wait at
table, and the family dressed every evening for dinner. Yet, much
to her surprise, Dolly found from the first the grandeur did not in
the least incommode her. On the contrary, she enjoyed it. She
felt forthwith she was to the manner born. This was clearly the
life she was intended by nature to live, and might actually have
been living--she, the granddaughter of so grand a man as the late
Dean of Dunwich--had it not been for poor Mamma's ridiculous
fancies. Mamma was so faddy! Before Dolly had spent three whole
days at the rectory, she talked just as the Compsons did; she
picked up by pure instinct the territorial slang of the county
families. One would have thought, to hear her discourse, she had
dressed for dinner every night of her life, and passed her days in
the society of the beneficed clergy.
But even that did not exhaust the charm of Upcombe for Dolly. For
the first time in her life, she saw something of men,--real men,
with horses and dogs and guns,--men who went out partridge shooting
in the season and rode to hounds across country, not the pale
abstractions of cultured humanity who attended the Fabian Society
meetings or wrote things called articles in the London papers. Her
mother's friends wore soft felt hats and limp woollen collars; these
real men were richly clad in tweed suits and fine linen. Dolly was
charmed with them all, but especially with one handsome and manly
young fellow named Walter Brydges, the stepson and ward of a
neighboring parson. "How you talked with him at tennis to-day!"
Winnie Compson said to her friend, as they sat on the edge of
Dolly's bed one evening. "He seemed quite taken with you."