"If you'll please to step in very quietly, ma'am," he said.
The room was full of people; all Riseholme was there, and since there
were not nearly enough chairs (Lucia saw _that_ at once) a large
number were sitting on the floor on cushions. At the far end of the
room was a slightly-raised dais, to the corner of which the grand piano
had been pushed, on the top of which, with its braying trumpet pointing
straight at Lucia was an immense gramophone. On the dais was Olga
dancing. She was dressed in some white soft fabric shimmering with
silver, which left her beautiful arms bare to the shoulder. It was cut
squarely and simply about the neck, and hung in straight folds down to
just above her ankles. She held in her hands some long shimmering scarf
of brilliant red, that floated and undulated as she moved, as if
inspired by some life of its own that it drew out of her slim superb
vitality. From the cloud of shifting crimson, with the slow billows of
silver moving rhythmically round her body, that beautiful face looked
out deliciously smiling and brimming with life....
Lucia had hardly entered when with a final bray the gramophone came to
the end of its record, and Olga swept a great curtsey, threw down her
scarf, and stepped off the dais. Georgie was sitting on the floor close
to it, and jumped up, leading the applause. For a moment, though
several heads had been turned at Lucia's entrance, nobody took the
slightest notice of her, indeed, the first apparently to recognize her
presence was her hostess, who just kissed her hand to her, and then
continued talking to Georgie.
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