"You can call it tragic if you like," commented Mrs. Sandworth, looking about for an escape from the stranded isolation of guests who have just been passed along from the receiving line; "but what it was all about was more than I ever could--" Her eyes fell again on Lydia, and she lost herself in a sweet passion of admiration and pride. "Oh, isn't she the loveliest thing that ever drew the breath of life! Was there ever anybody else that could look so as though--as though they still had dew on them!" She went on, with her bold inconsequence: "There is a queer streak in her. Sometimes I think she doesn't care--" She stopped to gaze at a striking costume just entering the room. "What doesn't she care about?" asked the doctor. Mrs. Sandworth was concentrating on sartorial details as much of her mind as was ever under control at one time, and, called upon for a development of her theory, was even more vague than usual. "Oh, I don't know--about what everybody cares about." "She's likely to learn, if it's at all catching," conjectured the doctor grimly, looking around the large, handsome room. An impalpable effluvium was in the air, composed of the scent of flowers, the odor of delicate food, the sounds of a discreetly small orchestra behind palms in the hallway, the rustling of silks, and the pleasurable excitement of the crowd of prosperous-looking women, pleasantly elated by the opportunity for exhibiting their best toilets. "To think of its being our little Lydia who's the center of all this!" murmured Mrs. Sandworth, her loving eyes glistening with affectionate pride. "It really is a splendid scene, isn't it, Marius?" "If they were all gagged, it might be. Lord! how they yell!" "Oh, at a _reception_!" Mrs. Sandworth's accent denoted that the word was an explanation. "People have to, to make themselves heard." "And why should they be so eager to accomplish that?" inquired the doctor. "Listen!" Standing as they were, tightly pressed in between a number of different groups, their ears were assaulted by a disjointed mass of stentorian conversation that gave a singular illusion as if it all came from one inconceivably voluble source, the individuality of the voices being lost in the screaming enunciation which, as Mrs. Sandworth had pointed out, was a prerequisite of self-expression under the circumstances. They heard: "--_For over a month and the sleeves were too see you again at Mrs. Elliott's I'm pouring there from four I've got to dismiss one with little plum-colored bows all along five dollars a week and the washing out, and still impossible! I was there myself all the time and they neither of thirty-five cents a pound for the most ordinary ferns and red carnations was all they had, and we thought it rather skimpy under the brought up in one big braid and caught down with at the Peterson's they were pink and white with_--"