As Helen’s eyes met John’s and dropped away; as he clasped her gloved fingers, marvelling at her grace and distinction in the trailing dinner gown of pale rose satin without frill or furbelow, each felt that this occasion had for them the solemn significance of a final renunciation of their love. It was as if she were standing in the church seeing Glynn take Posey to be his wife. A keen pang of shame for the weakness that had overcome her on their journey shot through her being. Ah, well! Fate had been too strong for her then. That was the last, the very last—like a farewell breathed into already deadened ears.
Posey’s attitude toward Helen also touched Miss Carstairs acutely. That there was in it a new consciousness she felt immediately. She recognized that Glynn must have eased his honest heart of its burden by telling his betrothed of his former love for her, and felt that this was as it should be, if Posey were to remain her friend. It was not tender apology, or loving sympathy, that Posey showed, nor yet bashful consciousness that she had in some way taken the ground from under Helen’s feet, but an exquisite mixture of all these. Her high spirits had for the moment deserted her. She kept close to her father’s side, answered Miss Bleecker’s fulsome greetings with no attempt at tart or witty answers, and, as their other guests came in, proceeded to do the honors as if "born to the purple" (so Miss Bleecker whispered to John Glynn).
The chaperon’s day of wonder was upon her, while the room rapidly filled with a company of people distinguished in the world’s eye of their winter colony, all of whom bore themselves toward the tenant of Reine des Fées and his youthful _châtelaine_ with the friendly consideration of accustomed intimates. To each of the new-comers, Glynn was presented by his host; without special announcement, it is true, yet in fashion so intentional that there was no mistaking the attitude in which he stood toward father and daughter. As they presently went in to dinner, in a salle with carved panels of French walnut and great lustres of Venetian glass illuminating its four corners, to gather around a table that left nothing for fastidious taste to criticise, Miss Bleecker wanted to pinch herself upon taking off her gloves, to feel assured that she was not in a dream. The old gentleman, yonder, well turned out by a good valet, in appropriate evening clothes, seated between a great lady of France, whose neck was wrapped in historic pearls, and an Englishwoman, of rank and exclusive habit, could he be the little old man of shipboard, whom Helen’s chaperon had despised and derided as the veriest pretender to good society? It was incredible! And the strangest part of the situation in old Sally’s eyes was that, save in externals, Herbert Winstanley had not altered in any particular from the shrewd quiet observer of the game of life, the mild commentator upon the ways of men and women, the almost childlike recipient of courtesy and kind words, whom she remembered with amused contempt.