It might almost have been the scene of a function at Chetwoode Manor
itself!

In a kind of dream she was wafted to the head of the table; for,
since the function was at her house, Missy had been voted the
presiding place of honour. It is a very great responsibility to sit
in the presiding place of honour. From that conspicuous position one
leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right,
laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational
gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison.
She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the
individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful
resourcefulness hangs the success of a dinner-party. But Missy,
though a trifle fluttered, had felt no anxiety; she knew so well
just how Lady Chetwoode had managed these things.

The hostess must also, of course, direct the nutrimental as well as
the conversational process of the feast. She is served first, and
takes exactly the proper amount of whatever viand in exactly the
proper way and manipulates it with exactly the proper fork or knife
or spoon. But Missy had felt no anticipatory qualms.

She was possessed of a strange, almost a lightheaded feeling.
Perhaps the excitement of the day, the rush at the last, had
something to do with it. Perhaps the spectacle of the long, adorned
table, the scent of flowers, the sound of music, the dark eyes of
Mr. Edward Brown who was seated at her right hand.

(Dear old faithful Ben!--to think of how his devotion to tippling