a moment only, he did not
recognise. It was a tall figure in white satin with a train of cloth of
silver thrown over her arm. There was nothing of the nervous _debutante_
in the attitude, nor was there the half-truculent self-assertion of the
modern girl. When people talked afterwards of her gown and her jewels,
Edmund only remembered the splendour of her pearls, and when he
mentioned them, a woman added that the train had been lined with lace of
untold value. What he felt at the time was the enormous triumph of the
eyes. Grey eyes, full of light, full of pride. He did not ask himself
what was the excuse for this "haughty bearing," and the old phrase,
which has now sunk from court manners into penny novelettes, was the
only phrase that seemed quite a true one.

Why did she stand so completely alone? It made no difference to this
sense of loneliness that she received warm greetings in the crowd, or
that Lady Dawning was fidgeting and maternal. Evidently (and he was
amused at the combination) she was going to present her cousin, John
Dexter's daughter. Did she remember now how she had advised Mrs.
Carteret to hide Molly from the public eye?

But Molly's figure was always to remain in his mind thus triumphant
without absurdity, and thus alone in a crowd. The blackness of her hair
had a strange force from the white transparent veil flowing over it, and
a flush of deep colour was in the dark skin. Edmund had several moments
in which to look at her and to realise that Molly was walking in a dream
of greatness. The little country girl he had seen just now had been
brought up to hear kindly jokes about Courts and their ways; not so
Molly. To her it was all intensely serious and intensely exciting. Could
he have known the chief cause of the intense emotion that filled Molly's
slight figure with a feverish vitality would he have believed that she
was happy? And yet she was, for no pirate king running his brig under
the very nose of a man-of-war ever had more of the quintessence of the
sense of adventure than Molly had, as Lady Dawning led her, the heiress
of the year, into the long gallery.

For one moment she saw Edmund Grosse, and she looked him full in the
face very gravely. She did not pretend not to know him; she let him see
the entirely genuine contempt she felt for him, and she meant him to
understand that she would never know him again.

CHAPTER XXVI

EDMUND IS NO LONGER BORED

As the season went on Edmund