Almost invariably
the pretty women and the good-looking men were well dressed. Only the
plain and ugly ones seemed not to care for appearances. But there were
more plain people than handsome ones; and dowdy forms strove jealously
to hide the charming figures, as dark clouds swallow up shining stars.
All faces, however, no matter how beautiful or how repulsive, how old or
how young, had a strange family likeness in their expression, it seemed
to Mary; a tense eagerness, such as before her novitiate she had seen on
the faces of Lady MacMillan's guests sometimes when they had settled
down seriously to play bridge.
She had expected to see unhappy and wildly excited faces, because, Peter
said, people often lost or won fortunes in these rooms in a single
night; but no one in this moving crowd looked either very miserable or
very radiant. They did not even appear to be greatly excited, yet most
of them seemed absorbed, as if they listened for a sound which would
mean something of vital importance; or else they had an air of fearing
that they had missed the all-essential signal which might never come
again.
It was not the "high season" yet, Mary's waiter at the Paris had said,
and the "_vrai monde_" would not come in its greatest rush until after
Christmas and the New Year; yet the Casino was filled with a throng of
persons many of whom looked immensely rich and important, and none of
whom, at worst, was shabby. Even those who were dowdy appeared
well-to-do.
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