"And when I allowed her to make its original, or its replica as the case may be, for me, I was another."
Selina found speech small and arriving from far. "Cousin Anna Tomlinson sent the dress around so that I could come."
"Mr. Tuttle Jones ... sat with her through a pianoforte number."
"Well, as for Anna Pope, by the grace of God, Tomlinson, there's never been any doubt in anybody's mind, she's a fool. As for Vincent, it's sheer perfidy! Go over there, in the next room, this one is cleared for the piano and the performers. Find a chair, get a place, I'll send someone to you, but for the land's sake, go and don't come back near me."
Selina hurriedly sought a gilded chair in an unobtrusive position, which as the evening went on proved to be an island solitude in an immediate waste of vacant chairs. She had not even a program to bury herself in. True, Mr. Tuttle Jones, the nephew, came and sat with her through a pianoforte number, but at its close he left, to come again in time with a second polite but perfunctory young man who also in time departed.
Then it happened. Selina never will forget it, never. A vocal number had reached that point where it reiteratingly bade 'Good-bye to hope, good-bye, good-bye,' and she was bitterly agreeing, when a gloved hand reached out and touched an empty gilt chair a few places beyond, while the young lady owner of the hand and of the brown eyes above it, smiled and in quiet gesture invited her to take it. What the kindly eyes had been seeing, though Selina could not know this, was a young guest awkwardly alone and betraying it in a color coming and going painfully and a chin piteously inclined to quiver.
Selina went, seventeen is not so very far along the way, and the sob so long threatening in the throat within the Vincent setting, arose undisguisedly.