By eight o'clock the girls were dressed and strutting up and down the hall to exhibit themselves to the gaze of their companions. Bridgie wore her coming-out dress--not so white as it had once been, but carefully chalked at the worst places, and swathed in lovely old lace round the shoulders. Esmeralda sported a pink moire dress which had once belonged to her mother, with a voluminous sash of white muslin, since nothing more elaborate was to hand, a wreath of roses out of last summer's hat pinned over one shoulder, with all the crunched-up leaves ironed out smooth and flat, and white gloves cleaned with benzoline until you could hardly tell them from new. She was a vision of elegance, or looked so at least to the ordinary observer; for when a girl is eighteen, and a beauty at that, she is bound to look charming, whatever be her clothes. At nine o'clock the guests were asked, and the hour had barely struck before they began to arrive. The sound of horses' feet was heard from without, wheels drew up before the door, and in they came, one party after another, having driven across country in the cold and the dark for five, for six, and in one instance for ten long miles, but arriving fresh and radiant for all that, and brimming over with good humour. Mademoiselle thought that she had not seen such a merry assembly since leaving her own dear land, or heard such a babel of tongues. Everyone seemed to know everyone else, and to be on terms of closest intimacy and affection; everyone talked at once and exclaimed with rapture and admiration at the preparations for the entertainment. It was easy to amuse such a company, and dancing and games were carried on with gusto in the long drawing-room, which had been prepared for the occasion, and looked comparatively festive with great fires burning in the fireplaces at either end. Soon after eleven o'clock the different members of the O'Shaughnessy family began to slip out of the room, but almost before their absence was noted, the Major was ringing a bell to attract attention and marshalling the company to the far end of the room. At the same signal two servants entered the room, turned out the lamps, and drew aside the curtains from the mullioned windows, through which the grounds could be seen, lying white and still in the moonlight. There was a rustle of expectation among the guests, for evidently something was about to happen, something appropriate to the day and the hour, yet what it could be no one had the ghost of an idea. That was the best of those dear O'Shaughnessys, a smiling lady confided to Geoffrey Hilliard--no one could tell what they would be up to next! They were different from everybody else, and their ways were so much more amusing and charming than the ordinary stereotyped usages of society.