Mrs. Crasterton found me as she came through to give some order about the refreshments. “Dear me, Obadiah,” she remarked, “was it you that abducted the guest of the evening? Everyone wants to talk to you, Sybylla. You must not hide yourself.”

BIG CHECKS stood up and said, “I can’t wait any longer for this performin’ bear”. He grunted as if he had said something smart and funny. “I’ve enjoyed myself so much with you that she would spoil the taste in my mouth. Look here, don’t you go worryin’ because you haven’t any brains, me dear: You’re perfect as you are.”

“I don’t worry for lack of brains,” I said demurely.

“That’s right, you leave brains to this performin’ bear with long teeth, and a thick waist, and about ten feet high.” He was again so pleased with his joke that I laughed at him, and he shook my hand very friendlily and went out by the hind door, took his cane and hat and let himself out.

Mrs. Crasterton, Gaddy, Edmée and I were finally left before the dying fire.

“Well, my dear, you are a huge success,” Mrs. Crasterton said to me. “I hope your dear little head won’t be turned by being the lion of the hour. Everyone has invited me to bring you to lunch or afternoon tea. People whom I had lost sight of since Papa died, came tonight, and smart people who have arisen since my young days have telephoned that they must meet you. Dear old Lady Hobnob is so taken with you that I am to take you to her big dinner tomorrow night and you are to spend the night with her. The literary people and artists are clamoring for you like the hungry lions at the zoo, but I don’t approve of the bohemians: they have dangerous political views and are loose in their morals.”

It was not disguised from me that my good behaviour had been a surprise. I had not shown the shock of disappointment on finding that people who had enjoyed opportunities of education, travel, “contact” and refinement, which had long been debarred me owing to indigence, were only like this. There weren’t any but Derek and Edmée who took my eye, and I heard Gaddy having quite a row with his sister about Edmée.

I sat by my window looking on the city across the Harbor for a long time. It all seemed unreal. A myriad lights shone like misty jewels across the balmy water where the ferry boats flitted like floating fires. It was all so beautiful that I resented more tensely than ever that so much of my life had been cramped into the ugly environs of ‘Possum Gully.

Edmée was up betimes next morning. I heard her talking to the others as I approached. “I was in hopes she would be more the enfant terrible, but she is too correct to be entertaining.”

“Wait till she comes out of her shell,” said Gaddy.