eight o'clock
`` Then you 'll come , '' Smith said . The old lady laughed . `` Apparently I will , if Miss Maitland has no other plan for the evening . '' Helen signified that she had none ; and thus it was that eight o'clock found them seated in an eligible corner of the big , gay restaurant , watching the animated holiday crowd , and themselves in no somber or taciturn mood . A restaurant may be the resort of strange people , but it is an institution of peculiar attractiveness , for all that . All the other tables in the room were occupied by merry parties , jewels and demigems glinted back a thousand lights , men and women of society and out of it laughed and talked , there was the clink of a myriad of glasses , the hurrying of anxious and expectant waiters , the tinkle of silverware on china , mingled with the ignored strains of an orchestra invisible and sufficiently remote not to dictate offensively the tempo of mastication of the diners . It was nothing if not a cosmopolitan gathering .