eflected from
the background, Cassandra thought that no sight had ever been quite so
romantic. It was all in keeping with the room and the house, and the
city round them; for her ears had not yet ceased to notice the hum of
distant wheels.

They went downstairs rather late, in spite of Katharine's extreme speed
in getting ready. To Cassandra's ears the buzz of voices inside the
drawing-room was like the tuning up of the instruments of the orchestra.
It seemed to her that there were numbers of people in the room, and that
they were strangers, and that they were beautiful and dressed with the
greatest distinction, although they proved to be mostly her relations,
and the distinction of their clothing was confined, in the eyes of an
impartial observer, to the white waistcoat which Rodney wore. But they
all rose simultaneously, which was by itself impressive, and they all
exclaimed, and shook hands, and she was introduced to Mr. Peyton, and
the door sprang open, and dinner was announced, and they filed off,
William Rodney offering her his slightly bent black arm, as she had
secretly hoped he would. In short, had the scene been looked at
only through her eyes, it must have been described as one of magical
brilliancy. The pattern of the soup-plates, the stiff folds of the
napkins, which rose by the side of each plate in the shape of arum
lilies, the long sticks of bread tied with pink ribbon, the silver
dishes and the sea-colored champagne glasses, with the flakes of gold
congealed in their stems--all these details, together with a curiously
pervasive smell of kid gloves, contributed to her exhilaration, which
must be repressed, however, because she was grown up, and the world held
no more for her to marvel at.

The world held no more for her to marvel at, it is true; but it held
other people; and each other person possessed in Cassandra's mind some
fragment of what privately she called "reality." It was a gift that they
would impart if you asked them for it, and thus no dinner-party could
possibly be dull, and little Mr. Peyton on her right and William Rodney
on her left were in equal measure endowed with the quality which seemed
to her so unmistakable and so precious that the way people neglected to
demand it was a constant source of surprise to her. She scarcely knew,
indeed, whether she was talking to Mr. Peyton or to William Rodney.
But to one who, by degrees, assumed the shape of an elderly man with
a mustache, she des