The day of the party at Allonby had been a day of pleasure to Effie, but of pleasure she was half afraid of and only half understood. The atmosphere about her had been touched by something beyond her experience,--softened, brightened, glorified, she could not tell how. She did not understand it, and yet she did understand it, and this soft conflict between knowing and not knowing increased its magical effect. She was surrounded by that atmosphere of admiration, of adoration, which is the first romantic aspect of a love-making. Everything in her and about her was so beautiful and lovely in the eyes of her young and undeclared lover, that somehow in spite of herself this atmosphere got into her own eyes and affected her conception of herself. It was all an effect of fancy, unreal, not meaning, even to Fred Dirom, what it had seemed to mean. When love came to its perfection, when he had told it, and made sure of a return (if he was to have a return), then Fred too, or any, the most romantic of lovers, would so far return to common earth as to become aware that it was a woman and not a poetical angel whom he was about to marry. But at present fancy was supreme, and Effie was as no real creature ever had been, lit up with the effulgence of a tender imagination, even in her own consciousness. She was not vain, nor apt to take much upon herself; neither was she by any means prepared to respond to the sentiment with which Fred regarded her. She did not look at him through that glorifying medium. But she became aware of herself through it in a bewildering, dazzling, incomprehensible way. Her feet trod the air, a suffusion of light seemed to be about her. It was a merely sympathetic effect, although she was the glorified object; but for the moment it was very remarkable and even sweet. “Well! it appears you were the queen of the entertainment, Effie, for all so simple as you sit there,” said her stepmother. “I hope you were content.” “Me!” said Effie, in those half bewildered tones, conscious of it, yet incapable of acknowledging it, not knowing how it could be. She added in a subdued voice: “They were all very kind,” blushing so deeply that her countenance and throat rose red out of her white frock. “Her!” cried Mr. Ogilvie, still a little confused with the truffles; “what would she be the queen of the feast for, a little thing like that? I have nothing to say against you, Effie; but there were many finer women there.” “Hold your tongue, Robert,” said his wife. “There may be some things on which you’re qualified to speak: but the looks of his own daughter, and her just turning out of a girl into a woman, is what no man can judge. You just can’t realize Effie as anything more than Effie. But I’ve seen it for a long time. That’s not the point of view from which she is regarded there.” “I know no other point of view,” he said in his sleepy voice. “You are putting rank nonsense into her head.”