Rose thought the room was lovely. She was standing in front of long sweeping curtains of blue velvet. The blue of the curtains put the blue of her dress in the shade, and her dress was velvet, too. Rose felt that the dress she had made for herself, that had seemed so grand at home, could never compete with the splendor of the curtains, and since she was not competing with the curtains, she felt that they protected her, falling from the top of the tall windows to the floor behind her as they might well have fallen in front of her. She had been looking forward to seeing this room, which was famous in the town, although not many people had had the privilege of visiting the house and seeing it for themselves. She recognized the velvet curtains the minute she walked into the room, and she turned at once to speak to Hubert Derdon about them, but just as she turned, Mr. Lord, who had been a very old friend of her father’s, came up and asked her for a dance, and she danced off with him, feeling very nervous and shy, and when the dance was over, Hubert had disappeared, and she had not had the chance since to speak to him and tell him what she knew about the curtains.