It was expected that “all London” would be there, and as the ball had been organized by Stapleton and La Planta ostensibly in aid of some charitable object, the newspaper press had laid itself out to give plenty of publicity.
“If I had arranged to make it a private ball,” Stapleton observed to Jessica one evening, “it would have cost me an enormous sum, and hundreds who have now bought tickets would not have done so. I was right to take your advice—you remember telling me the way to make a ball of this sort an unqualified success, and at the same time run it at other people’s expense, was to make it a ‘charity’ concern; get the newspapers to print columns of fancy stories about it and publish lists of names of people with titles likely to be present; and let it be known that women of high social standing would receive the guests. That advice was excellent, Jessica. There has been such a rush for tickets that if it continues we shall have to stop selling.”
“Have I ever given you bad advice?” Jessica asked with a smile. “In matters of this sort, and for that matter in most cases, a clever woman’s advice is the safest advice to follow. You have not yet asked me what I am going to wear. It is too late now to tell you. But this I can say—my dress will surprise you.”
“I don’t want to be surprised.”
“Naturally. Nobody does. But I have a reason for wanting to surprise you at your own ‘charity’ ball,” and she laughed. “You will find out why, later. Have you any idea what Cora Hartsilver and her precious friend, Yootha Hagerston, intend to wear?”
“Not the slightest. How should I? And why should their dresses interest you?”
“They do interest me, and that is sufficient. If you have not enough acumen to guess the reason, I don’t think much of your intellectual foresight,” and she laughed again in her deep contralto voice.
Meanwhile Jessica Mervyn-Robertson and Cora Hartsilver met often at receptions, dances and other social functions, and, though outwardly friendly, each knew the other secretly hated her.
At a lunch party in Mayfair during the first days of June there had been talk about Ascot, and Jessica had mentioned casually that on Gold Cup Day fortune invariably favored her. Twice, she said, she had found herself at the end of the day much richer than in the morning, “and in other ways,” she added, “Gold Cup Day has helped me towards happiness.”
“Would it be too much to inquire what the other ways were?” Cora, who sat near her at the angle of the table, said lightly. “I can’t see how good fortune could come to anybody on a race day except through the actual racing unless——”