The preparations for that visit cost Dolly some weeks of thought and effort.  The occasion demanded it.  She was afraid she had no frocks good enough for such a grand house as the Compsons.  “Grand” was indeed a favorite epithet of Dolly’s; she applied it impartially to everything which had to do, as she conceived, with the life of the propertied and privileged classes.  It was a word at once of cherished and revered meaning—­the shibboleth of her religion.  It implied to her mind something remote and unapproachable, yet to be earnestly striven after with all the forces at her disposal.  Even Herminia herself stretched a point in favor of an occasion which she could plainly see Dolly regarded as so important; she managed to indulge her darling in a couple of dainty new afternoon dresses, which touched for her soul the very utmost verge of allowable luxury.  The materials were oriental; the cut was the dressmaker’s—­not home-built, as usual.  Dolly looked so brave in them, with her rich chestnut hair and her creamy complexion,—­a touch, Herminia thought, of her Italian birthplace,—­ that the mother’s full heart leapt up to look at her.  It almost made Herminia wish she was rich—­and anti-social, like the rich people—­in order that she might be able to do ample justice to the exquisite grace of Dolly’s unfolding figure.  Tall, lissome, supple, clear of limb and light of footstep, she was indeed a girl any mother might have been proud of.

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.