As she stood there men were brought up to her in constant succession and introduced. They wrote their names on her programme, bowed and went away. She smiled at each one of them. Before dinner she had been introduced to the Prince--German, fat and cheerful--and the second dance of the evening was to be with him. Some of the men who had been dining in the house she already knew--Lord Crewner, Roddy Seddon, Lord Massiter, and others--and once or twice now the faces that were led up to her were familiar to her. The great ballroom seemed to be already filled with people, and still they came pressing up the stairs. Rachel was miserably unhappy. For one moment before she had left her room, where her maid had stood admiringly beside her, when she herself had seen the reflection of the white dress and the dark hair and the flushed cheeks in the long mirror, for one great moment she had been filled with exaltation. This ball, this agitation, this excitement was all for her. The world was at her feet. The locked doors were at last rolling open before her and all life was to be revealed. Pearls that Uncle John had given her were her only ornament. They laughed at her from the mirror, laughed and promised her success, conquest, glory. Life at that instant was very precious. But, alas! the dinner had been a terrible failure. She had sat between Lord Crewner and Lord Massiter, and had no word to say to either of them. Lord Massiter was middle-aged and hearty and kind, and he had done his best for her, but she had been paralysed. They had talked to her about the opera, the theatres, hunting, books, Munich; she had had a great deal to say about all these things, and she had said nothing. Always within her there seemed to be rivalry between the Beaminster way of saying things and the other way. When Lord Crewner said to her, "What I like in music is a real cheerful little piece that one can go to after dinner, you know," there were a whole number of Beaminster observations to make. But as soon as they rose to her mouth something within her whispered, "You know that you don't mean that. That's at second hand. Give him your opinion." And then that seemed presumption, so she said nothing. It was all wretched and quite endless. Uncle John sent her encouraging smiles every now and again, but she felt that he must be disappointed at her failure. The food choked her. The tears filled her eyes and it was her pride only that saved her. Through it all she felt that her grandmother upstairs in her bedroom was planning this. Afterwards the Princess, seeing perhaps that she was unhappy, was kind and motherly to her, and told her funny stories about her childhood in Berlin. But all the time Rachel was saying to herself, "You're a fool. You're a fool. You've got no self-control at all."