With the rose in her hand she curtsied to him, while the blurred throng cheered itself hoarse, and the band struck up You Great Big Beautiful Doll, with extraordinary rapture, to the tune of which the noise finally subsided to a battery of hilarious congratulations which left her flushed and a little breathless. Nancy Chalmers and Betty Page had burst upon her like petticoated whirlwinds and presently, when the crowd had lessened, the judge came to introduce his visitor.
“Mr. Fargo and his daughter are our guests at Gladden Hall,” he told her. “They are old friends of Valiant’s, by the way; they knew him in New York.”
“Katharine’s lighting her incense now, I guess,” observed Silas Fargo. “See there!” He pointed across the stand, where stood a willowy tan figure, one hand beckoning to the concourse below, where Valiant stood, the center of a shifting group, round which the white bulldog, mad with recovered liberty, tore in eccentric circles.
As they looked, she called softly, “John! John!”
Shirley saw him start and face about, then come quickly toward her, amazement and welcome in his eyes.
As Shirley turned away a little later with the major, that whispering voice seemed still to sound in her ears—“John! John!” There smote her suddenly the thought that when he had chosen her his Queen of Beauty, he had not seen the other—had not known she was there.
A few moments before the day had been golden; she went home through a landscape that somehow seemed to have lost its brightest glow.