ed her to see that
the elder Halberton girl powdered her nose. She wondered what it must
feel like to have one's hands encased in skin-tight gloves, and how
these English people managed to speak with such an elegant tiredness.
It seemed to her inevitable that Lady Halberton must be ashamed of her
cousins, and she was relieved, but a little frightened, to hear this
great lady invite her father and her to dinner at the Shelbourne on the
following night. After all, she reflected, there must be something in
the name of Hewish. She wondered how on earth she could make her
father understand that she couldn't very well go to dinner in the dress
that she was wearing, the only one that she possessed.

III

It is extraordinary to think how forty-eight hours had turned this
amazing, sexless creature into a woman. The problem of a dinner-dress
was solved for her almost at once by Jocelyn himself. As soon as they
were safely back at Maple's he asked her if she really wanted to dine
with the Halbertons at the Shelbourne, and when she said, "Of course!"
he produced a five pound note from the pigskin case that he carried in
his coat-tail, and turned her loose in Grafton Street. An hour later
she returned, breathless with excitement, carrying the dress that she
had bought, a frock of white muslin, high at the neck and
hand-embroidered with a pattern of shamrock. Life was becoming a
matter of great excitement.

The maid at Maple's dressed her in the evening, a blowsy young woman
from Carlow who called her 'my darlin,' and told her that she had a
beautiful head of hair. Biddy had never told her that her hair was
beautiful, and Gabrielle herself had always considered it something of
a nuisance. In the hotel bedroom a cunning combination of mirrors
showed her the thick plait hanging down her back. She had never seen
her own back before. Looking at it she shrugged her shoulders to see
what they looked like.

Of course she was ready dressed long before she need have been. She
went down into the hall of the hotel and waited for her father. She
hoped, and was almost sure, that she looked lovely. While she stood
there, looking into a huge oval mirror, an old gentleman of much the
same cut as her father came in and stared at her as though she were
some new and curious animal. She turned and smiled at him. She would
have smiled at anyone on that evening. He did not give her a smile in
return. He only went red in his ba