However that might be, she did not find her enjoyment of the day at all interfered with by the morning's incident. She and Helen paid some visits, then dined out, and finally arrived rather late at a house where there was a great evening gathering. This house was one at which she had not before been a guest, and she was full of lively curiosity about the people she was to meet there. The hostess was fond of collecting together all sorts of stray oddities, and of trying to further a scheme of universal brotherhood by mixing up in her drawing-room a most motley crowd, including all classes, from the ultra fine lady to the emancipated slave. It was not, perhaps, very amusing to the portion of her guests who found themselves lost in a sea of unknown faces, through which no pilot guided them; yet people went to her, partly because she was grande dame, and partly as to a lion show. Mrs. Churchill thought her country girl would be amused by one visit to this lady, and Mary was delighted at the prospect of seeing the possessors of various well-known names.
The rooms were very full when they arrived; and when, after considerable exercise of patience and perseverance, they had struggled in and got to a corner where they could breathe, and speak to each other, Helen said,
"Well, my dear, I hope you will find the sight worth the scramble—it is fuller than usual to-night, I think; and if I followed my own inclinations, I should try to slip round to a little room I know, where there are seldom many people, and rest there. But that would not be fair to you."
"Indeed it would," Mary answered. "Do let us go; we can perhaps move about a little, later, and I positively cannot breathe here now."
They worked their way accordingly to the little boudoir Helen spoke of. Their progress was not without incidents—now an acquaintance, now a celebrity, now a woolly-haired princess, now a jewelled Oriental, met them as they went; but at last they turned out of the crowd and passed into a room nearly dark, quite empty, and cool. "Nobody has found it out yet," said Helen, sinking into a chair with a sigh of relief.
They remained silent, enjoying the quiet and fresh air. A large window opening on a balcony occupied the greater part of one side of the room, and a glimmer of reflected light, and a murmur of voices, came from the windows of the great drawing-room which also opened to the balcony. But both light and sound were subdued to the pleasantest softness, and the night-air was still and sweet; Mary's seat was beside the window, Mrs. Churchill sat further back towards the middle of the room.
Presently there was a sound of steps on the balcony. Helen moved impatiently. "Somebody coming," she murmured.
Mary involuntarily raised her hand as a sign that she should be silent; a voice had begun to speak which she recognized with surprise. It was that of their acquaintance of the morning. He was speaking in French, with a bad accent, and a voice which sounded even more disagreeable than it had done when he spoke to Helen.
"Bah! one can breathe here. What a crowd! And, my good friend, allow me to remind you that you are not doing your duty. If you don't look a little more sharply after our interest we shall quarrel."
"What am I to do?" another voice answered, and this time the accent was perfect, and the tones marvellously harmonious. "You bring me here, into this horrible crowd, where I am stifled, and I do not see what I can do except answer everybody who speaks to me, and try to look as if I were not longing to get away."