Alma was as good as her word.
She did everything without consulting me--fixed the date of the
reception for a month after the day of my father's visit, and sent out
invitations to all "the insular gentry" included in the lists which came
from Nessy MacLeod in her stiff and formal handwriting.
These lists came morning after morning, until the invitations issued
reached the grand total of five hundred.
As the rooms of the Castle were not large enough to accommodate so many
guests, Alma proposed to erect a temporary pavilion. My father agreed,
and within a week hundreds of workmen from Blackwater were setting up a
vast wooden structure, in the form of the Colosseum, on the headlands
beyond the garden where Martin and I had walked together.
While the work went on my father's feverish pride seemed to increase. I
heard of messages to Alma saying that no money was to be spared. The
reception was to surpass in grandeur any fête ever held in Ellan. Not
knowing what high stakes my father was playing for, I was frightened by
this extravagance, and from that cause alone I wished to escape from the
sight of it.