Berny turned, startled—and in a vague, undefined way, disturbed, too—to see who had been the object of this salutation. To her astonishment it was Dominick. As she looked at him, he replaced his hat and she saw—to the augmentation of that vague sense of disturbance—that he was as pale as the bowing woman was pink.
“Dominick,” she exclaimed, “who’s that?”
“Miss Cannon,” he said in a low tone.
“Rose Cannon?” hissed Hazel on the other side of him, her face thrust forward, and tense in the interest of the moment, “Bill Cannon’s daughter?”
“Yes. I met her at Antelope.”
“Berny, did you see her dress?” Hazel hung over her brother-in-law in her excitement. “That’s straight from Paris, I’ll bet you a dollar.”
“Yes, I saw it,” said Berny in a voice that did not sound particularly exhilarated; “maybe it is.”
She looked back at Miss Cannon who had turned away and was moving off through the crowd with her escort. Then she leaned toward Dominick. His voice had not sounded natural; as she placed her arm against his she could feel that he trembled.
She said nothing but settled back in her chair, dryly swallowing. In those few past moments her whole world had undergone a revolution that left her feeling dazed and a little sick. It was as if the earth had suddenly whirled around and she had come up panting and clutching among familiar things reversed and upset. In an instantaneous flash of illumination she saw everything—the look in the woman’s eyes, her rush of color, Dominick’s voice, his expression, the trembling of his arm—it was all perfectly plain! This was the girl he had been shut in Antelope with for three weeks. Now she knew what the change was, the inexplicable, mysterious change that had so puzzled her.
She felt bewildered, and under her bewilderment a pain, a fierce, unfamiliar pain, gripped her. She did not for the moment say anything or want to speak, and she felt as a child does who is dazed and stupefied by an unexpected assault of ill treatment. The slight sensation of inward sinking, that made her feel a little sick, continued and she sat in a chilled and drooping silence, all her bridling conceit in herself and her fine clothes stricken suddenly out of her.