The maid at Maple's dressed her in the evening, a blowsy young woman from Carlow who called her 'my darlin,' and told her that she had a beautiful head of hair. Biddy had never told her that her hair was beautiful, and Gabrielle herself had always considered it something of a nuisance. In the hotel bedroom a cunning combination of mirrors showed her the thick plait hanging down her back. She had never seen her own back before. Looking at it she shrugged her shoulders to see what they looked like. Of course she was ready dressed long before she need have been. She went down into the hall of the hotel and waited for her father. She hoped, and was almost sure, that she looked lovely. While she stood there, looking into a huge oval mirror, an old gentleman of much the same cut as her father came in and stared at her as though she were some new and curious animal. She turned and smiled at him. She would have smiled at anyone on that evening. He did not give her a smile in return. He only went red in his bald scalp and cleared his throat, hobbling up to his room and wondering what the devil Maple's was coming to. A moment later Jocelyn arrived, very stately in the evening dress of the seventies. His face looked brown and hard and weathered, like a filbert, against his white spread of shirt-front. His eyes twinkled, his temples were flushed, and the twisted cord of an artery could be seen pulsating across each of them: all three being symptoms of the bottle of Pommery on which he had dressed. When he saw Gabrielle he said "Ha--very good, very good," and she, in an access of enthusiasm, kissed him and smelt his vinous breath. It was no more than a stone's throw from their hotel to the Shelbourne, Jocelyn remembering his long-forgotten manners stepped aside courteously when they crossed the road as if he were escorting a real lady. Gabrielle couldn't understand this at all; she would have liked to jog along with him arm in arm. The magnificence of the Shelbourne with its uniformed porters overpowered Gabrielle, and when she reached the Halbertons' private room, she, who had often been reproved for talking the heads off Biddy and Mr. Considine, was dumb. Jocelyn, however, pouring gin and bitters on his Pommery, did talking enough for both of them. He was in excellent form. His talk flowed steadily and Gabrielle, drifting as it were, into an eddy, was left at liberty to examine her cousins and their company.