CHAPTER XXI.

MRS. TRACY’S DIAMONDS.

Mrs. Tracy was going to have a party—­not a general one, like that which she gave when our readers first knew her, and Harold Hastings stood at the head of the stairs and bade ’the ladies go this way and the gentlemen that.’  Since Dolly had become so exclusive and a leader of fashion, she had ignored general parties and limited her invitations to a select few, which, on this occasion, numbered about sixty or seventy.  But the entertainment was prepared as elaborately as if hundreds had been expected, and the hostess was radiant in satin and lace, and diamonds, as she received her guests and did the honors of the occasion.

The September night was soft and warm, and the grounds were lighted up, while quite a crowd collected near the house to hear the music and watch the proceedings.

Mrs. Tracy would have liked to have had Jerry in the upper hall, where Harold had once stood.

‘It would help to keep the child in her place,’ she thought, ’for she is getting to feel herself of quite too much consequence, with so much attention from Arthur.’

But her husband promptly vetoed the proposition, saying that when Jerry Crawford came to the park house to an entertainment it would be as a guest, and not as a waiter.  So a colored boy stood in the upper hall, and a colored boy stood in the lower hall, and there were colored waiters everywhere, and Dolly had never been happier or prouder in her life:  for Governor Markham and his wife, from Iowa, were there, and a judge’s wife from Springfield—­all guests of Grace Atherton, and, in consequence, bidden to the party.

Another remarkable feature of the evening was the presence of Arthur in the parlors.  He had known both Governor Markham and his wife, Ethelyn Grant, and had been present at their wedding, and it was mostly on their account that he had consented to join in the festivities.  Jerry, it is true, had done a great deal toward persuading him to go down, repeating, in her own peculiar way, what she had heard people say with regard to his seclusion from society.

‘You just make a hermit of yourself,’ she said, ’cooped up here all the time.  I don’t wonder folks say you are crazy.  It is enough to make anybody crazy, to stay in one or two rooms and see nobody but Charles and me.  Just dress yourself in your best clothes and go down and be somebody, and don’t talk of Gretchen all the time!  I am tired of it, and so is everybody.  Give her a rest for one evening, and show the people how nice you can be if you only have a mind to.’

Jerry delivered this speech with her hands on her hips, and with all the air of a woman of fifty; while Arthur laughed immoderately, and promised her to do his best not to disgrace her, and to appear as if he were not crazy.

Jerry’s anxiety was somewhat like that of a mother for a child whose ability she doubts; and, after her supper was over she took her way to the park house to see that Arthur was dressed properly for the occasion.