CHAPTER FOUR - MARRIED


It was almost like a scene at a ball, the great white-and-gold music room
before dinner that night. The Burnett family proper numbered fifteen among
themselves, and there were nearly thirty guests added. It was entirely too
large a house party to have handled successfully for very long, but it
would be most awfully jolly for three or four days; and now, when the
whole crowd were gathered waiting for dinner, the picture was one of such
bubbling joy that Jack’s very heavy heart seemed to himself to be terribly
out of place there and he wondered whether he should be able to put up
even a fairly presentable front during the endless hours that must ensue
before the time for breaking up arrived.

Burnett took him all around and introduced him to people in general, and
people in general seemed to him to merely bring the fact of her
pre-eminence more vividly than ever before his mind. He found himself
looking everywhere but at them too, and listening with an acutely
sensitive ear for sounds quite other than those of their various lips. But
eternal disappointment rewarded his eyes and ears. She was nowhere.

So he talked blindly about nothing to all the nobodies and laughed
stupidly over all their stupidities until—suddenly and without any
warning—a fearful jump in his throat sent the mercury in his constitution
shooting up to 160, and he saw, heard, felt, gasped, and knew, that that
radiant angel in silver tissue who had just entered the farther end of the
room was indubitably Herself.

(Married!)