Mrs Bretton comes into Lucy's room and tells her to show her dresses. She turns them over and says a new one is required. A dressmaker measures Lucy. Two days later a pink dress arrives. Lucy says it is not for her. She would almost as soon wear the costume of a Chinese lady of rank. Her godmother replies that she will wear it that very evening. They are going with Graham to a concert in the large hall of the principal musical society. The best pupils of the Conservatoire will play. A lottery for the poor will follow. The king, queen, and prince of Labassecour will be present, and Graham has asked for punctual dress by seven, as a compliment to royalty. About six, Lucy is taken upstairs. No one forces her. Another's will simply puts the dress on, softened with black lace. She looks in the glass with fear and turns away with more. At seven Graham is there. Mrs Bretton wears brown velvet, and Lucy, walking in that shadow, envies the dark folds. She hopes he will not think she has decked herself to be looked at. He gives her flowers, and he notices the dress only with a kind smile and a satisfied nod. The shame quiets. The dress is simple, without flounce or furbelow. It was the light cloth and the bright tint that scared her. If he finds nothing absurd in it, her own eye begins to agree.
The carriage is a comfort on a cold, fine night, and so is setting out with cheerful companions. The hall, when they enter, is a public world Lucy does not know how to inhabit. She watches faces, clothes, the small theatre of people arriving, including a third person in pink and black lace whom she notes as she notes the rest. Mrs Bretton and her son talk easily. He complains, laughing, that he has an unsentimental mother. She warns him that La Terrasse will not hold two mistresses, if he thinks of bringing a goddess home. The concert has not begun when a choral burst brings in the king, the queen, and the court. Lucy has never seen living royalty. She looks for a king and queen and finds a middle-aged soldier and a rather young lady, and she feels half cheated, half pleased. The king's trouble is a constitutional melancholy. The queen carries the shadow of it. Their little son, the Prince of Labassecour, leans on his mother's knee and now and then lifts his father for a moment. The king smiles, then relapses when the child stops speaking. Ambassadors and the elite of the foreign residents fill the benches near them.
Among those benches Lucy finds Ginevra Fanshawe, seated by the daughter of an English peer, both of them in the suite of the British embassy. Ginevra's hair waves loose, unlike the close foreign braids. She chats as if delighted with herself and her place. Lucy does not look at Graham. She knows he has seen Ginevra, because he goes quiet, answers his mother in few words, and suppresses sighs. His lady-love is beaming from a sphere above him, and he cannot be sure of a look. Their seats are near enough. Ginevra's eyes find the doctor and his mother. Lucy keeps in the shade. Ginevra studies him steadily, raises a glass to examine Mrs Bretton, and then laughs and whispers to her neighbour. The music follows. Lucy will not dwell on it for its own sake. A singer aims bitter complaint toward the royal seats. Lucy's attention keeps returning to Graham: whether he is amused or wounded, and what he will do with the sight of Ginevra in that company. She tells him Ginevra is there. He has already seen, and he has seen a little spectacle Lucy missed. Ginevra's companion is Lady Sara, whose mother has called him in professionally. Lady Sara is proud and not insolent, and Ginevra will not have risen in her esteem by making butts of her neighbours. The neighbours are Graham and his mother. He can grant that a young bourgeois doctor is fair game. He has never seen his mother ridiculed. The curling lip and the sarcastic glass give him a curious sensation. Lucy tells him to think nothing of it. Ginevra in a giddy mood would laugh at the melancholy king. It is heedless folly, not malevolence. He answers that he has not been accustomed to see Miss Fanshawe as a feather-brained schoolgirl. Six months ago he thought her divine. The test of the presents, which he let Lucy discuss more warmly than he himself believed, first proved Ginevra mortal. Her beauty still held him. Three hours ago he was her slave. As she passed tonight, triumphant, his feeling did her homage. One sneer, and the homage is finished.
The concert ends. The lottery begins in a pleasant scramble. The queen leaves her chair, glides along the young ladies, and speaks several sentences to Lady Sara and to Ginevra, who glow with gratification, Ginevra most of all. Gentlemen gather. Nearest Ginevra stands Count de Hamal. Graham rises. The room is stifling. He asks Lucy and his mother to step into the air. Mrs Bretton keeps her seat and tells Lucy to go. Outside, the night is still and the sky is sown with stars. Lucy is wrapped in fur. He asks if she is pensive on his account. She feared he was grieved. He says that when he dies it will not be of a heart complaint. He may be stung and seem to droop. No sentimental malady has yet gone through his whole system. He is glad Ginevra laughed at his mother. He would not give the old lady for a dozen beauties. He lifts his hat in a mock reverence and thanks Miss Fanshawe. Nine parts of his heart, he says, were always sound, and the tenth bled from a lancet-prick that will heal at once. Lucy says he is heated and will feel differently tomorrow. He says the heat is already gone. There are two good reasons, and he has told her one. They turn back. The corridor is blocked. Lucy thinks she hears her name, and there is Monsieur Paul, grave, intent, his eye sardonic on the pink dress. He is in the habit of strictures on dress at Madame Beck's. Graham asks, low, who the savage-looking friend is. A professor, Lucy says, a very cross little man. They regain their seats slowly. Graham has neither forgiven nor forgotten Ginevra. He looks at her openly, not humbly. De Hamal is now a fixture beside her. In some animated talk she lifts her arm, and a handsome bracelet gleams. The gleam strikes Graham's eye and lights a derisive spark. He laughs and says he might as well lay his offerings on that altar, since no shopgirl accepts a gift more easily. He still knows she is a girl of family. Lucy says he does not know her education, tossed from school to school, and that her parents were brought up much as she was. She will not let him exaggerate. Ginevra is giddy and, Lucy is certain, honest enough. He shakes his head. The king and queen rise. Lucy likes the queen's countenance. Mrs Bretton is tired. In the crush after the royal departure, Mrs Bretton makes them a lane. The carriage is found without much delay, and the drive home is pleasanter than the drive there, until they notice that the coachman, who has spent part of the evening in a wine shop, has taken them far past the turn to La Terrasse. Graham looks out on unfamiliar pollards, halts, mounts the box, and drives. They arrive an hour and a half late. Martha has kept a fire and a neat supper. Dawn is breaking before they reach their rooms. Lucy takes off the pink dress and the lace mantle with happier feelings than she had when she put them on. Not everyone who shone in that hall could say as much. Not all of them had been satisfied with friendship, with its calm comfort and its modest hope.
