'I will point her out to you,' said the maid. 'Here come some. The waltz is over. Stand back, they will pass this way.'
'Hang it, Gorges,' said the man in blue; 'we shall have to vacate our seats. I'd go into the cardroom, but, dem it, I dare not touch cards—I never win, never; and to lose eternally is not fun.'
The maid touched Jane. 'She is coming on her father's arm.'
Mrs. Marley drew back, a spike as of ice pierced her heart. For a moment she said nothing. Before her rose a blue vapour, like wood smoke, and the lights died away to mere sparks.
She was about to see him, after a lapse of many years, whom she had once loved with her passionate heart, but now abhorred; the man who had desolated her life and now proposed to render it absolutely desert by bereaving her of her child.
It was as though a vast gulf opened before her, and she looked across it at the man who had once been so near to her—the gulf of time that had swallowed up her youth and all her happiness.
She could dimly perceive in the haze a middle-aged man, spruce, with hair curled and shining, high white collars, and a spotless neckcloth, a cream silk uncrumpled waistcoat, and a face bland, with a fine complexion. Slowly, as from a swoon, she rallied. It was the pressure on her arm of the maid's hand that recovered her and brought her back from the region of dream.
'There, there!'
She saw before her a beautiful girl, with low dress and bare arms, gloved hands, in white, with no other colour about her than a rose in her hair and a coral and gold necklet—a girl, lovely, far surpassing all that Jane could have imagined.
A cry of joy; and, in a moment—