chess said. Lucy
listened to everything with a smile which was somewhat set and painful.
She was so worn out with emotion and pain that at last neither words nor
looks made much impression upon her. She saw the Contessa and Bice
stream by to their carriage with a circle of attendants, still in all
the dazzle and flash of their triumph; and after that the less important
crowd, the insignificant people who lingered to the last, the girls who
would not give up a last waltz, and the men who returned for a final
supper, swam in her dazed eyes. She stood at the door mechanically
shaking hands and saying "Good-night." The Dowager, moved by curiosity,
anxiety, perhaps by pity, kept by her till a late hour, though Lucy was
scarcely aware of it. When she went away at last, she repeated with
earnestness and a certain compunction the advice of the other ladies.
"You don't look fit to stand," she said. "If you will go to bed I will
wait till all these tiresome people are gone. You have been doing too
much, far too much." "It does not matter," Lucy said, in her
semi-consciousness hearing her own voice like something in a dream. "Oh,
my dear, I am quite unhappy about you!" Lady Randolph cried. "If you are
thinking of what I told you, Lucy, perhaps it may not be true." There
was a bevy of people going away at that moment, and she had to shake
hands with them. She waited till they were gone and then turned, with a
laugh that frightened the old lady, towards her.

"You should have thought of that before," she said. Perhaps it might not
be true! Can heaven be veiled and the pillars of the earth pulled down
by a perhaps? The laugh sounded even to herself unnatural, and the elder
Lady Randolph was frightened by it, and stole away almost without
another word. When everybody was gone Sir Tom stood by her in the
deserted rooms, with all the lights blazing and the blue day coming in
through the curtains, as grave and as pale as she was. They did not look
like the exhausted yet happy entertainers of the (as yet) most
successful party of the season. Lucy could scarcely stand and could not
speak at all, and he seemed little more fit for those mutual
congratulations, even the "Thank heaven it is well over," with which the
master and the mistress of the house usually salute each other in such
circumstances. They stood at different ends of the room, and made no
remark. At last, "I suppose you are going to bed," Sir Tom said. He came
up to her in a pr