"There's one person who didn't accept," said Jack, with a crooked smile.
"She invited you? Well, it would have been rather pointed to leave you out. And she wouldn't be human, if she didn't want you to see her in her triumph."
"I shall depend on you to tell me all about it," said Jack.
"Oh, I shall just shake hands with her and then go straight home to bed."
As the day approached, the excitement redoubled until Barbara herself began to fear an anticlimax. Only the need of registering her triumph prevailed over physical exhaustion and sustained her in the stifling hostility of Berkeley Square. Her father and mother drove with her to the hotel and were formally announced. They would have liked to loiter near her and to suggest that they were the hosts and were indulging their daughter's whim, but Barbara urged them into the ball-room and returned alone to her place at the head of the stairs. There for an hour she received and tried to keep count of her guests. Congratulations poured in upon her; she was complimented on her enterprise, her looks, her dress.
"No one but you would have thought of doing such a thing," cried Lady Maitland admiringly.
"Oh, I expect a great many people thought of it, but I was the only one who did it," she answered, and the phrase comforted her.
Bobbie Pentyre, who had been sent to spy out the nakedness of Bodmin Lodge, arrived late with the report that it was almost deserted and that Lady Pebbleridge, black with rage, had announced that she would never give another ball, if people deserted her at the last moment like this.
"She said that your leavings weren't good enough for her," he added. "I thought that was rather rude to the people who had toiled all the way out to Knightsbridge, so I handed it on to any one who I thought would be interested, and that emptied the house quicker than ever."
"I'm sorry if her party's a failure," said Barbara, "but—if people prefer coming to me...?"