Beautiful Thoughts

Beautiful Thoughts; or, The Candid Conversations of a Young Lady, Preserv’d for the Edification of Future Generations

“How can I, with my feeble powers of description, do the scene justice?” fretted Annabelle.

“Oh, heavens!” cried Polly. “Do go on, Anna!”

Indeed, the most exacting critic of romantic literature might well have agreed with the charming Pollyanna. Having arrived at the supreme moment of breathless suspense in her tale of the last evening’s festivities, Annabelle seemed paralyzed by self-consciousness. Was it her power of narrative or the substance of her tale that stopp’d her fluent tongue? Three young ladies of fashion in various stages of deshabille, gathered round a blazing fire in the exquisitely appointed bedroom of the tale’s teller, waited with scarce-concealed impatience for her next words.

“Yes, Anna, do get on with it,” commanded Eustacia. “I’ve had the most dreadfully trying day; while you were sleeping ’til teatime, Cook was making an absolute nuisance of herself. What does she put in those horrid little rock cakes? Actual gravel?”

“Enough!” exclaimed Polly. “Anna, please!”

“Oh, very well,” said Annabelle. “There we were, as I said, alone in the billiard room…

… The sconces flickered low, the fire even lower, but no enveloping darkness could hide the passion in young Lord William’s eyes. I felt myself entranced, nay, almost hypnotised, by the perfection of his profile and the waving locks of his hair, curling back from his noble forehead in a rich profusion that might have shamed the immortal Byron.”

“I am burning every volume of poetry in this house first thing in the morning,” murmured Eustacia from behind a bolster.

“Hush, Stacia!” Lorelei said in the gentlest tones of remonstrance. “It is like a page from Mrs. Radcliffe – I must hear more.”

“I knew,” continued Anna,”as my last chemise button faced its imminent undoing, that a woman’s greatest decision was mine to make. As his hands continued with astonishing alacrity to roam over my person, ev’ry tender scene of his wooing flashed through my mind in vivid succession: his honey’d words, his increasingly bold caresses, his charming unpunctuality, his heart-wrenching failures to resist the wiles of the demon liquor. He idolized me, he begged me to save him from himself while continuing to frequent the lowest dens of vice…”

“Oh, Anna, he is perfect!” cried Pollyanna, almost swooning. “How did you ever find the strength to resist him?”

“I… I… oh girls, I did not resist!” faltered Anna, hiding her burning cheeks as though to conceal her shame and remorse.

A collective gasp from the assembled friends bore wordless witness to the shock of their dear friend’s confession; then, with her customary kindness, Lorelei reached for the trembling hand that covered Anna’s eyes. “Dearest, you are among your closest companions in this room,” she said. “We all have our temptations, and if the truth be told, who among us could judge you harshly, or cast the first stone at an all-too-natural weakness?”

“Dear God, I hope the billiard room door was locked,” observed Eustacia.

“What happened next?”demanded Pollyanna.

Annabelle raised her eyes to her friends’ understanding countenances; taking heart, she continued.

“The next few moments are a haze of carnal sensation; bewilder’d, swept away, my next clear memory is of William’s arms around me as we sank onto the rug. A sigh, a flurry of inflaming kisses, and then his beloved voice in my ear,’Oh, darling, is it not bliss? Oh angel mine, can you not feel the press of my desire for you?’ But oh, my dear friends! Apart from a rhythmic motion amongst the ravages of my petticoats, the truth was… I could feel nothing at all!”

“Anna, do you need the services of a physician?” cried Lorelei.

“Was he in the correct general area?” inquired Eustacia.

But Polly, with her instinctive sympathy, immediately grasped her dear friend’s terrible meaning and attempted to aid her in expressing it. “Anna, we have all seen Eustacia’s anatomy books; we have a general understanding of, well, proportion and what might reasonably be expected…”

“Yes! Oh, Polly!” sobbed Anna, overcome at last. “Who can fully explain the difference between appearance and reality, or the crushing sadness of disappointed expectation? When I did not reply to his tender questioning, he stood up with a look of the most dreadful affront. At that very moment, a spark from the dying fire kindled, and in its unforgiving light, the shattering of my dream of love was revealed.”

“Are you saying that he was under-endowed in his manly attributes?” demanded Eustacia.

“Yes, yes!” shrieked Anna in the agony of her grief. “He was reminiscent of nothing so much as one of the pickled gherkins Cook buys at Wadeforth’s; the Russian ones, no more than two bites each!”

“Anna!” cried Lorelei. “Does the spiritual aspect of our physical joinings mean nothing at all to you? What of love? What of the highest aspirations of the divine love? I cannot believe you to be merely a size queen,” and she blushed at the common term.

“Lorelei, you forgive too much,” said Eustacia, in a tone that brooked no denial. “A physical union which cannot even be experienced physically is surely of no spiritual use at all. Anna, time for bed; you are overwrought, and we have a long day of calls tomorrow. Never worry, dear – your next encounter will surely be much more fulfilling.”

And as the friends bade each other good-night, Pollyanna whispered in Annabelle’s ear,”Does Lord William have a brother?”

Beautiful Thoughts Part II: Pollyanna’s Peril

The still of a white-wrapped winter midnight had long since descended upon the stately house of Dame Agatha Rooth, bastion of B_____ society and aunt to young Annabelle. The dowager lay soundly sleeping, secure in her great name and her nightcap of true Valenciennes lace, certain that her four lovely protegées were secure as well in the fortress of the Rooth ancestral home.

But hark! a stealthy footstep, a rustle as of lace and velvet: something moved in the darkness, something soft and sly, tiptoeing on slippered feet toward the grand staircase. Who had penetrated the fiercely-guarded realm of Dame Agatha? Who dared cross the chilly vastness of the foyer? Whose cunning and desperation could have prompted such an incursion? Softly, softly, each step a whisper on cold marble…

“Aha!” squeaked Annabelle, popping out from behind the balustrade with a most unladylike suddenness. “I thought it was you! Where have you been?”

“Annabelle!” hissed the pale and stricken Pollyanna, for indeed our intruder was she.  “What on earth – hush! Put out that light! Go back to bed!” and poor Polly attempted to rush up the stairs to the safe haven of her room. Annabelle blocked her neatly in a flurry of beribbon’d silk dressing gown.

“Annabelle, let me by!” pleaded Polly in a harried whisper.

“Shan’t,” countered the insouciant miss, and flung herself down at full length across a stair. “Not ’til you tell me where you’ve been.”

“I’ll step straight on you!”

“I’ll scream and wake the house!”

Pollyanna gasped in fear. “You wouldn’t dare! Aunt Rooth would have our heads if she found us here at this hour!”

Crossing her ankles and addressing herself to the ceiling far above, Annabelle replied,”Would she? Our heads? Who, may I ask, is wearing a perfectly appropriate and quite becoming dressing gown and who is wearing a rather rumpled ballgown and a cloak covered in snow?”

“And WHO can’t find a moment of peace in this wretched house?” demanded Eustacia, flinging open the library door, still brandishing a fireplace poker in one hand and holding a book in the other.

Polly and Anna shrieked simultaneously and simultaneously shushed each other.

“Stacia! What are you doing up at this hour?” asked Polly.

“I came down to get a book…” began Eustacia, limned in the dying firelight like a lovely avenging angel.

“And in only your nightdress!” exclaimed Annabelle. “What if somebody saw you?”

“Frankly, Anna, I wasn’t expecting a crowd in the foyer…”

“What if John had awakened and come to investigate the noise? What would you have done then? Really, Stacia, it’s only common decency!” continued Annabelle without a pause for breath.

“John?”

“The footman!”

“Ah, John!” laughed Eustacia. “You mean the taller, good-looking footman? I imagine it wouldn’t be the first nightdress John’s seen in his time. And you needn’t bother to put on such a shocked expression, Anna.”

“Oh!” huffed Annabelle, thoroughly out of countenance. “Just because some girls go to picnics without stays and receive compliments from thoroughly disreputable gentlemen who aren’t in the least bit interesting to well-brought-up young ladies anyway doesn’t make it right or decent to prance half-naked through the house…”

“Girls, please!” interrupted Pollyanna, with tears of vexation streaming down her lily cheeks. “Please, let me get to my room and change out of this gown! In the sacred name of friendship, I beg it of you both!”

Eustacia dropped the poker to embrace her; Anna, shame-faced, rushed forward as well.

“Come, Polly,” murmured the wise and tender-hearted Stacia. “Anna and I will be quiet and peaceable as little doves and whisk you away to our nest in safety.”

And as the two fair penitents turned to support their weeping friend up the stairs, a gentle voice from the landing said,”It truly is too cold to stay in this chilly foyer any longer.”

Polly shrieked again, Stacia dropped her book, and Annabelle tripped most ungracefully down a stair. As Lorelei stood silently gazing down at her friends, amaz’d at this violent reaction, a door somewhere in the vast house creaked in protest at its abrupt opening, and a familiar and terrifying voice was heard to call -

“Jackson? Jackson, who is it? Are there burglars? Jackson, get the police!”

Four minds with but a single thought sped four dainty pairs of feet swiftly up the stairs and out of harm’s way.

Beautiful Thoughts: Pollyanna’s Peril, Continued

An unusually subdued quartet of fair young maidenhood kept company at breakfast next morn. Their youthful countenances reflected pale and listless in the shining mahogany of Lady Agatha’s grand dining table; a table much like the great lady herself, having been brought at untold trouble and expense from the feudal halls of the ancient Alicyns to grace the home and ennoble the name of the wealthy, powerful Rooths. Unlike many such arrangements, uniform satisfaction had been the result of this delicate transfer, and the newly-made Lord Rooth was expertly managed by his lady wife throughout a happy life into a quiet, content grave.

Now Lady Agatha had the management of two young nieces and their two bosom friends in their first season of B____ society, and her commitment to duty was equaled only by her determination to see her bevy of girls take their places at the pinnacle of the season’s festivities. She soon proved a fierce and able general in the forays and skirmishes of the social whirl; though she could check Annabelle’s riotous spirits with one stern glance, the girls were gowned, coiffed, slipper’d and gloved to a vain young lady’s highest standards and infinite delight. Though Eustacia was warned not to ruin her eyes with needless reading, that learned miss had unchecked access to the library; and if Polly’s emotions seemed overwrought and changeable to the doughty dame, a dainty tray of cocoa and biscuits seemed to manifest itself whenever it was most needed, no matter the hour. Even the shy, sylph-like Lorelei, whose elusive grace and endearing charm had heretofore entirely escaped her own notice, was beginning to color and blossom under Lady Agatha’s unobtrusive encouragement, and more than one dowager that season had watched with despair as “that quiet girl” effortlessly collected the beaus of her own showier offshoot.

Lady Agatha read her morning letters in the strangely quiet breakfast room, noticing at last the wan faces of her protegées.

“Annabelle, are you asleep at the table?” she snapped. ”What is it, child? Are you ill?”

“No, Aunt,” answered her niece with a start, opening her eyes as wide as possible while Eustacia stifled a yawn.

“What has come over this household? Don’t tell me that four healthy young girls are exhausted after a rare evening at home. Why, Pollyanna looks as though she’s been reading Lord Byron all night…”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Polly. “I … I may have a cold, Lady Agatha; that is all, surely!”

The mistress of Rooth House surveyed her charges with a piercing gaze. “A cold, or a late night of giggling and gossiping? We have a busy week ahead, and I cannot have you making yourselves ill. Off to bed, all of you, as soon as you have made a reasonable breakfast. Jackson will look in on you while I am paying my morning calls.” Lady Agatha gathered her skirts, rose from the table with decorous majesty, and as was the charming old custom, all the girls rose, too.

“Good day, Aunt. Good day, Lady Agatha,” they chorused as she swept from the room, pausing only to hand a letter with multitudes of foreign stamps to Eustacia.

“Who has written you, Stacia?” queried Lorelei as they all collapsed gratefully into less upright modes of repose.

“My uncle,” replied Eustacia, looking uncommonly pleased.

“Oh! Count Eugenio!” cried Polly. “How exciting! How lucky you are to have such a dashing and adventurous guardian – shall we hear some of the letter?”

“Count Eugenio!” retorted Annabelle, with a noise that in one less ladylike might well have been termed a snort. “Uncle Eugene, you mean. He’s no more Italian than I am; and as for being a count, well…”

“He can style himself the Grand Vizier of the Eastern Isles for all I care, Anna,” replied Eustacia with surprising patience. “He has been the most kind and attentive uncle in the world, and has done his utmost to take the places of my dear parents.”

Annabelle had the grace to look abashed. “He is a darling, Stacia. I did not mean to speak so unkindly – and he does write the most fascinating letters!”

Lorelei rose from the table. “Perhaps we’ll hear some of his adventures once Stacia has the chance to read them herself – in the meantime, hadn’t we better settle ourselves upstairs before Jackson comes to shepherd us to bed? She’ll only check once – you know how she hates the stairs – and then we can all meet in Anna’s room to hear the letter.”

“NO!” exclaimed Annabelle, as she spied Polly hurrying for the door. “Not the letter – Polly’s adventures of last night!”

Pollyanna, stricken, stood in the doorway as her friends cluster’d round.

“You did startle us,” remarked Eustacia. “I almost ran out without… my book… and the poker… where WERE you, Polly?”

Lorelei joined in with a soft,”Won’t you feel better if you tell us, dearest?”

“Oh…” quavered Polly.

Annabelle, in her most persuasive tones, added,”It wasn’t Lord William’s brother, was it? Do tell, Polly.”

“No!” cried the blushing maid. “It was – it was – Drusus Thomason!” And she fled pell-mell up the stairs, weeping again.

Lorelei and Eustacia, shocked beyond words, simply stared at each other.

“Who? Who on earth is he?” demanded Annabelle, utterly at a loss.

Beautiful Thoughts: Pollyanna’s Peril, Concluded

“Who?” repeated Annabelle from the coziest armchair in Pollyanna’s room.

“Drusus, Anna; Senator Thomason’s youngest son. We met him three weeks ago…”

“Where?” demanded the puzzled young miss.

“… at the Senator’s ball, don’t you remember?” continued Lorelei.

“Yes, young Drusus – brother to Tiberius and Germanicus, no less,” added Eustacia. “What a family. The party was in his honor, yet by eleven o’clock he had disappeared – and no great loss, in my opinion. Never have I seen a young man so thoroughly convinced of his own superiority to the rest of the civilized world.”

“It is true he danced not at all, and rarely spoke, but perhaps he is simply shy, Stacia,” replied Lorelei. “The poor Senator was most distressed by his early absence. I wonder where he went?”

Pollyanna burst into tears and buried her face in the snowy linen bedclothes.

“Polly!” exclaimed Stacia. “Do you mean to tell us you have met him in private, even before last night’s disgraceful rendezvous?”

The raven-haired damsel nodded, her head still hidden in the counterpane.

“When?” squeaked Anna, her eyes alight with excitement.

Polly raised her tear-stained face. “Oh, girls! Many, too many times to count! I cannot understand what draws me to him when every meeting ends in crushing disappointment and an agony of heartbreak. He is so unhappy; he needs me, yet I fail him always…”

“Perhaps,” interjected Eustacia,”you had better begin at the beginning, Polly.”

With a doleful sigh, Pollyanna complied.

“I noticed him first at the Senator’s ball; he was aloof, distant, almost disdainful, but I felt there was a secret pain hidden behind his apparent contempt for the world. It was as if I knew him, knew him better than anyone, perhaps even himself. I watched him, hoping yet fearing to meet his stern glance. And then, quite by chance it seemed, we met at the punch bowl! He addressed me with an air of weary warmth, inviting me to quit the madding scene of the ballroom and share that higher sphere which he alone inhabited…”

Half an hour later, three girls perched on the bed around poor Polly in silent astonishment. It was left to the dauntless Eustacia to ask the question which confounded them all.

“So every time you’ve met, it’s been the same?”

Polly sniffed and nodded.

“You meet secretly; he begins to describe his philosophical struggles and the torments of his soul; he tells you that only your wise purity can deliver him from his demons; he reaches for you with burning eyes and then… just keeps talking?”

“Yes, oh yes, Stacia!” and the fair one wept afresh. “He draws back each time; how unworthy he must find me! Oh poor Drusus! He is almost maddened by his needs; he raves, he curses the fates and the day he was born, he works himself into a frenzy of self-loathing…”

“And at the apex of his frenzy, he has this ’seizure’ of which you told us…”

“Yes! He pales, his mouth opens slightly, his eyes become vacant, he groans like one possessed…”

“And then falls asleep,” concluded Stacia. “Leaving you in an anguish of grief and longing.”

Polly could only sob her agreement.

“It’s perfectly obvious and utterly revolting,” declared her interlocutor. “Uncle warned me about men like this, though I doubt he’d remember the conversation.”

“What kind of men?” faltered Lorelei, scarcely daring to ask.

“Auto-audionanists,” pronounced Eustacia.

“What?” gasped Annabelle.

“Auto-audionanists, Anna. Men who can only reach the, let us say, ecstasy of fulfillment by listening to themselves talk. They are more common than is generally supposed, though young Drusus seems to be a rather advanced case. They are completely selfish; and girls, be assured they never change. It is a lifelong affliction which the afflicted inflict upon others, thereby feeling it no affliction at all. You must never see him again, Polly.”

Pollyanna’s shrieks of despair seemed to pierce the very hearts of her listeners. What solace could they offer her? What balm could soothe this wounded spirit?

“Polly, listen to me,” commanded Lorelei, in a voice so firm and strong that Annabelle slipped off the bed in surprise. “Think for a moment. Picture the last meeting with him. Now, imagine that the girl in that room with Drusus is not you, but a character in a book. Imagine the scene as Miss Austen would have written it, Polly. Think of yourself reading it, each event exactly as it happened, every time it happened.”

Through her tears, Pollyanna said,”It’s impossible, Lorelei. Miss Austen would never write anything so… so…”

“Repetitive?” suggested Lorelei.

“Ridiculous?” added Eustacia.

A faint light began to glow in Polly’s lovely eyes. “She might write such a scene, but not again and again – how dull that would be! I cannot imagine that even Marianne Dashwood would stand for such behavior more than once. And Elinor: can you imagine her reaction? How she would chide, and how right she would be! Anne Elliot would quit the room at once; Fanny would be in agonies of embarrassment but too timid to escape; and Elizabeth Bennett! What sport she would make of him! Now Jane Bennett, on the other hand – Stacia, do you think Jackson would bring us some biscuits and cocoa? I am suddenly ravenous! Now Jane Bennett would be shocked at first…”

“Brilliant, Lorelei,” said Stacia under the flow of Polly’s excited monologue.

“Oh, it was nothing,” smiled the gentle maid, and rose to ring for Jackson.

And as Annabelle half-listened to the joyful sound of her friend’s returning happiness, one lingering thought flashed briefly through her mind:

“Who?”

Beautiful Thoughts: a Revelation and a Relative

For two weary days Annabelle had been confined to her bed, concealing ‘neath a damask coverlet the blanched visage and scarlet-rimmed eyes of a feverish chill. Her fair friends had been as attentive as Lady Agatha would allow; fear of contagion being one of the few earthly terrors the doughty dame would permit residence in her noble bosom. Polly sent Mrs. Betteredge’s latest novel, The Hermit of the Heights, ready-marked in all the most terrifying places; and if she privately thought that young ladies who lurked in chilly foyers in order to pounce on their errant friends were perhaps inviting illness, the remark never escaped her crimson lips. Stacia hovered at Cook’s elbow, attempting to persuade the half-deaf beldame to produce the dainty trifles sure to tempt an invalid appetite. After all efforts had proven fruitless, she hustled the old lady from her fiefdom, donned an apron, and turned to with amazing skill and great success. From the sitting room, Lorelei played all of Annabelle’s favorite Scotch melodies to lift her spirits during the long afternoons, then sacrificed her own rest to lull the sufferer to sleep with the Brahms they both loved.

On the morning of the third day, Lady Agatha herself pronounced her niece sufficiently recovered to be escorted downstairs and established in the warmest corner of the library. Jackson, who considered it far too early for the young lady to be moved, toiled up and down the back stairs with shawls, pillows, and a veritable chemist’s shop of remedies, uttering below her breath a continuous stream of dire prophecies about the inevitable outcome of these foolhardy modern ideas. Annabelle, still wanting her usual spirits, submitted meekly to being buried under a growing mountain of wool and linen. At last the faithful servant surveyed her handiwork and considered it well-done, and with a final warning not to move from the sofa until permitted, she retired from the room.

Stacia entered briskly, striding straight to the opposite door and flinging it wide; then crossing back to the divan, she swiftly and efficiently divested Annabelle of at least half her plentiful wrappings.

“Stacia!” Annabelle feebly remonstrated. “Jackson has just now finished arranging me.”

“So I gather,” replied her cousin. “And I have just finished rearranging you. Tell the truth – are you not more comfortable now, and is not your breathing easier?”

“Yes,” admitted Anna. “Thank you, Stacia – oh, Polly! How did you know?”

“I thought you might be longing for your silks and needle,” laughed Polly, placing a delicate box of gilt and ivory inlay at the side of the divan. “I knew Lady Agatha had forbidden you to work in your bed, and I could not but imagine how dreadfully dull you must have been without your favorite toys.”

“Is that your new collar?” inquired Stacia, as the delighted girl began to sort colors and stabbed a gleaming lancet through an emery bag with returning strength.

“Mmm-hmm,” was the only reply audible, and then, “Polly, where is your point de gaze cap? I saw a dreadful tear when last you wore it; I could not stop thinking of it all through the next two waltzes, and there was simply no getting to you to hide it through that mad crush at the D_____’s fete.”

“It is utterly astonishing to me that you can espy an inch-long rent in a half-covered piece of lace across a crowded ballroom,” observed Eustacia as Polly went to fetch the offending cap. “Your ocular faculty has been terrible since you were a child; I distinctly recall your pitching headfirst off the veranda at the H____ deV_____’s garden party because you were too vain to wear eyeglasses before strangers.”

“It was growing dark,” protested Annabelle. “In any case, I can certainly see what I need to… and sometimes what no one else does.” With a mysterious smile on her still faint lips, she bent over her embroidery.

Eustacia, normally a young woman of remarkable self-command, started visibly. “What do you mean?” she demanded with unexpected warmth, just as the lovely Pollyanna made her graceful way back into the room.

“What does who mean?” she asked.

“I mean,” returned Annabelle with a rather sly smile, “that my limited ocular faculties have seen something which both of you would find very, very interesting.”

“Oh what could it be?” cried Polly, wide-eyed. The third fair maiden was silent.

With a glance at the library door and a studied pause for greater effect, Anna leaned forward and in thrilling tones announced, “I have seen the name of Lorelei’s unknown suitor!”

“Who, Anna? Who is it?” asked Pollyanna in a breathless hush, while Stacia sank back into her chair and added, “And how did you happen to discover it?”

“Did you see those lovely white roses that Jackson brought up on the second day I was ill?” demanded the rapidly recovering invalid. “She was in error; they were not intended for me at all! The note attached was quite plainly addressed to Lorelei; unfortunately, Jackson realized her mistake just as I…” and here she stopped, in sudden and uncharacteristic confusion.

“Opened the note,” finished Stacia. “Annabelle, even for you…”

“Oh, bother!” snapped Polly, quite startling her companions. “What did you see? Who is it?”

“His name is… his name is… something something Bart!” crowed Annabelle. “Do either of you know him?”

Her charming confidantes regarded each other in utter bafflement.

“Mr. Bart? Are you sure you saw it clearly? It’s a terribly odd name,” puzzled Polly.

“It was in my hand; I saw it perfectly well. It is an odd name; it was spelled oddly, too. Perhaps he is a foreigner,” Anna ventured.

“Spelled oddly how, Anna?” asked Stacia, a faint light of understanding and amusement dawning in her luminous eyes.

“He put a full stop at the end,” she answered. “Is that French?”

Polly tried to stifle the bubbling mirth within her charitable breast; Stacia, however, fell back against the cushions again, laughing long and heartily.

“What?” demanded Annabelle, sensing an affront. “What is so amusing? Is it German? You know I never paid attention at Miss P_____’s Academy. What is it? Tell me this minute!”

“Oh, Annabelle!” Eustacia said. “Do you never read any of Polly’s novels? Bart. is an abbreviated form of ‘baronet;’ it’s the man’s title, not his name!”

“Oh…” began the embarrassed girl, then:

“OH!” gasped all three of the friends as one, and Pollyanna added, “Lorelei is being courted by a baronet! She’ll have a title! She’ll be in DeBrett! She’ll be…”

“She’s coming!” hissed Anna, as the young lady, her shell-like ears surely burning, came hurrying into the room.

“Girls!” cried Lorelei in her bell-like tones, “the most marvelous surprise! Count Eugenio is here, now – and he has with him the single most beautiful young man I have ever seen!”

Annabelle, that fragile creature, leapt from her couch of pain, scattering shawls and needles to the wind; and it must be recorded, in the interest of sacred Truth, that her three dearest companions kept hard at her heels as she raced to the grand foyer.