"My soul doth magnify the Lord!" she whispered.
The night of Dodo's ball had arrived, and she was going to lead the cotillion, but not dance more than she felt to be absolutely necessary. She had told everybody what was going to happen to her, in strict privacy, which was clearly the best way of keeping it secret for the present. Since she was not going to dance more than a step or two she had put on all the jewels she could manage to attach to herself, including the girdle of great emeralds that Waldenech had given her. This was a magnificent adornment, far too nice to give back to him when she divorced him, and she meant to let Nadine have it, as soon as she could bear to part with it herself, which did not seem likely to happen in the immediate future. It consisted of large square stones set in brilliants, and long pear-shaped emeralds depended from it. Jack had once asked her how she could bear to wear it, and she had said: "Darling, when emeralds are as big as that, they help you to bear a good deal. They make a perfect Spartan of me." In other respects she wore what she called the "nursery fender," which was a diamond crown so high that children would have been safe from falling over it into the fire, the famous Chesterford pearls, and a sort of breast-plate of rubies, like the High-priest.
"I suppose it's dreadfully vulgar to wear so many jewels," she said to Jack, as they took their stand at the top of the stairs, where Dodo intended to remain and receive her guests, as long as she could bear not being in the ball-room, "but most people who have got very nice stones like me I notice are vulgar. The truly refined people are those who have got three garnets and one zircon. They also say that big pearls, great eggs like these, are vulgar and seed-pearls tasteful. What a word, 'tasteful'! And they talk of people's being very simply and exquisitely dressed. Thank God, no one can say I'm simply dressed to-night. I'm not: I'm the most elaborate object for miles round. Jack, when my baby— Dear Lady Ayr, how nice to see you, and Esther and John. Seymour dined here, and he has been taking notes of our clothes for the new paper called Gowns!"
As in the old days, when Dodo piped, the world danced, and she was as vital, as charged with that magnetism that spreads enjoyment round itself more infectiously than influenza, to-night as ever. Her beauty, too, was like a rose, full-blown, but without one petal yet fallen: and she stood there, in the glory of her incomparable form, jeweled and superb, a Juno decked for a feast among the high gods. All the world of her friends streamed up the stairs to be welcomed by that wonderful smiling face, and many instead of going in to the ball-room waited round the balustrade at the stair-head watching her. By degrees the tide of arriving guests slackened, and she turned to Jack.
"Jack dear, the band is turning all my blood into champagne," she said. "Come and have one turn with me round the ball-room. Why are they all standing about, instead of going to dance? Do they want to be shown how? Just once round, or perhaps twice, and then I will stop quiet until the cotillion."
Dodo suddenly knit her eyebrows, and looked sharply down into the hall below.
"I was right, and you were wrong," she said. "There's Waldenech just come in. He is not going to come upstairs. Wait here for me."
Jack stepped forward.