... She had dropped the corset.... She murmured
feebly 'Alb--'.... She began to dream queer dreams and to see strange
lights.... And then something gave way with a crash, and she fell
forward, and regiments of horses trampled over her, and at last all
living things receded from her, and she was in the midst of a great
silence. And then even the silence was gone, and there was nothing.
So ended the first part of Lily's adventures at Hugo's infamous annual
sale.
* * * * *
When she recovered perfect consciousness, she was in the dome. She knew
it was the dome because Albert had once, at her urgent request, taken
her surreptitiously to see it. Simon was standing over her, as
sympathetic as the most exigent sister-in-law could wish, and the great
Shawn family feud had expired.
In two minutes she was her intensely practical self again. In five
minutes she had acquainted Simon with all her experiences; they were but
the complement of what he himself had witnessed.
The sense of a mysterious calamity over-hanging Hugo's, and the sense of
the shame which had already disgraced Hugo's, pressed heavily on both of
them. They knew that only one man could retrieve what had been lost and
avert irreparable disaster.
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