Newcomers who were ignorant of the past

Odette's afternoon teas are increasingly popular and growing more respectful, in spite of her wild past. There to witness the transition from an "old" parlor to a new, ascending one, are Mme Verdurin and her "faithful." 

Proust's use of "newcomers" who are unaware of Odette's past is important here, as it relates to the passage of Time in the final volume. Proust also changes course with character development, upsetting and shifting the social order. His demotion of Mme Verdurin is notable.

"Odette would begin to come home with the utmost punctuality for tea...She had succeeded in gaining credit among newcomers who were ignorant of the past."

"Mme Verdurin did indeed entertain the idea of 'society' as her final objective, but her zone of attack was as yet so restricted, and moreover so remote from that by way of which Odette stood some chance of arriving at an identical goal, of breaking through, that the latter remained in total ignorance of the strategic plans which the Mistress was elaborating."

"And it was with the most perfect sincerity that Odette, when anyone spoke to her of Mme Verdurin as a snob, would answer, laughing: 'Oh, no, quite the opposite! For one thing she hasn't the basis for it: she doesn't know anyone.'"

"At all events Mme Swann's friends were impressed when they saw in her house a lady of whom they were accustomed to think only as in her own, in an inseparable setting of guests, in the midst of her little group which they were astonished to behold thus evoked, summarised, compressed into a single armchair in the bodily form of the Mistress, the hostess turned visitor...Mme Verdurin."

As she is leaving the Swann's, the petulant Mme Verdurin says, "'You don't know how to arrange chrysanthemums...They are Japanese flowers; you must arrange them the same way as the Japanese.'"

And thus begins Odette's success as a hostess. Charles Swann is to play a minor role in the rest of the novel.