"To think of dinner at eight o'clock!" said Miss Joanna, who was only just recovering her powers of speech. "So very fashionable! I wish, dear, if you can, you would notice what they have. Mrs. Bobby says her cook is very good at croquettes. I wish you could tell me, dear, if they are better than ours."
"I'm afraid I shan't be able to think of croquettes," said Elizabeth, "what with the burden of being on my best behavior and entertaining Mr. Gerard. I think by the way, that he must be that dark man I have seen sometimes in their pew on Sundays. Which would he like me best in, do you suppose—the white crepe or the organdie? I must get them both out, and decide which to wear."
Elizabeth's spirits were as easily exhilarated as they were depressed. She ran up-stairs, humming a gay little tune which had not come into her head for many a day. This dinner at the Van Antwerps', with the prospect of meeting a few of her neighbors and apparently, one unmarried man, might haveseemed to many people a commonplace affair enough; but to Elizabeth it was a great occasion, and for the rest of the evening, bright visions of future pleasure danced before her eyes. That night, for the first time in many weeks, she did not cry herself to sleep, thinking of Paul.
"Andyou really think I look nicely?" Elizabeth asked this question in tremulous excitement, as she stood before the long pier-glass in her room on the night of her first dinner-party. The maid was on her knees behind her arranging the folds of her train, Miss Joanna stood ready with her cloak, and Miss Cornelia hovered a little way off, admiring the scene. Elizabeth held her head high, there was a brilliant color in her cheeks, her eyes shone like stars. You would hardly have known her for the same girl who had struggled with sad thoughts and disappointed hopes in the twilight only a few days before. This seemed some young princess, to whom the good things of life came naturally, unsought, by the royal prerogative of beauty.
"You—you look lovely," faltered Miss Cornelia, forgetting her principles in the excitement of the occasion "and your dress is sweet."
"It is fortunate I had it cut low, isn't it," said Elizabeth, as she clasped a string of pearls, which had once belonged to her grandmother, about her round white throat. "There, do I look all right? You'resuremy skirt hangs well? I wanted a white rose, but we have no pretty ones left." A slightcloud of discontent crossed her face, but vanished instantly; since really, as she said to herself, she looked very nice even without flowers.
"Don't be late," entreated Miss Joanna. "Just think if the dinner should be spoiled!"
"Yes, it would be very bad manners," added Miss Cornelia "not to be punctual."
"I don't know," said Elizabeth, doubtfully. "It's rather countrified to be too early." But still she drew on her gloves and put on her cloak, and started a good half-hour before the appointed time, in deference to Miss Joanna's fears for the dinner and Miss Cornelia's sense of the value of punctuality.
The clock was striking eight as she entered the wide hall of the Van Antwerps's house, and read, or fancied that she did, in the solemn butler's immobile countenance, an assurance that she was unfashionably prompt. The demure little maid who followed him and took Elizabeth's cloak, regretted to inform her that Mrs. Van Antwerp was not quite ready, but would be down directly, and hoped that Miss Van Vorst would excuse her unpunctuality. Elizabeth's heart sank, but the maid was ushering her into the drawing-room, and there was no retreat. Yet she shrank back involuntarily, as the long room yawned before her, empty, except for one person whom she did not know; and thus she stood for a moment hesitating, her warm Titian coloring framed against the dark plush of the portiere, and her white gown falling about her in graceful folds, of a statuesque simplicity almost severe, but from which her youth and rounded curves emerged all the moretriumphant. Her heart beat fast and there was a deep burning color in her cheeks, but she held herself erect, with the proud little turn of the head that seemed to come to her by nature.
The tall dark man who was turning over the leaves of a magazine at the end of the room, looked up as she entered and gazed at her for a moment in silence. Their eyes met; for an instant he seemed to hesitate. Then he rose and walked slowly towards her.
"You must let me introduce myself, Miss Van Vorst," he said, and his voice was like his movements, very deliberate, yet it was clear-cut and pleasant in tone. "My name is Gerard. Mrs. Van Antwerp told me I should have the pleasure of taking you in to dinner."
He spoke so quietly and naturally, and seemed to accept the situation with such absolute indifference, that whatever awkwardness it might have contained for a young girl nervous over her first dinner, was instantly removed. Elizabeth felt grateful, and yet perversely a little piqued that this grave, dark man should place her at a disadvantage, that he should be perfectly at home and know exactly what to do, when she was nervous and flustered. But that kind Providence which had endowed Elizabeth with so many good gifts had given her among others a power to cover inward perturbation with a brave show of self-possession.
"I'm terribly early," she was able to say now, quite lightly and easily, though still with that uncomfortable beating of the heart. "My aunts arevery old-fashioned, and insist on punctuality as one of the cardinal virtues."
"In which they are quite right, I think," said Mr. Gerard, smiling. "But when you know Mrs. Van Antwerp well, you will have learned that it is the one virtue in which she is utterly lacking."
"I—I don't know her very well," Elizabeth admitted, regretting somewhat that she could not assert the contrary. "I have never even been here before," she added, glancing about the room, whose stateliness was a little overpowering.
"Really! Then wouldn't you—a—like to come into the conservatory and look at the flowers?" suggested Mr. Gerard, who seemed to have charged himself with the duties of host. "Oh, you needn't wait for Mrs. Van Antwerp," he added, smiling, as Elizabeth hesitated. "I know the time when she went to dress, and can assert with confidence that she won't be down for another half-hour."
So Elizabeth found herself led, somewhat against her will, into the famous conservatory, of whose beauties she had often heard; but with which, it must be confessed, she was less occupied than with the man by her side, at whom she cast furtive glances from beneath her long lashes. He was tall—decidedly taller than herself, though she was a tall woman, and rather broadly built than otherwise. His dark, smooth-shaven face, which had lighted up pleasantly when he smiled, was in repose rather heavy and impassive, with an ugly, square chin, that seemed to indicate an indomitable will, of a kind to pursue tenaciously whatever he might desire. Incontradiction to this, his eyes, except when a passing gleam of interest or amusement brightened their sombre depths, had a weary indifferent look, as if there were nothing in the world, on the whole, worth desiring.
"And this is the man," thought Elizabeth, "whom I am expected to amuse. He doesn't look as if it would be an easy task. But no doubt Mrs. Bobby has given him the same charge about me, and he is trying, conscientiously, to obey. That's why he's taken me in here to show me the sights, the way they do to the country visitors." Her heart leaped rebelliously at the thought, even while she was saying aloud mechanically: "'What a fine azalea!' I wonder if I look like a countrified production. My gown isn't, at least; but then—he wouldn't appreciate that fact. It probably would be the same to him, if it came out of the Ark; he isn't the sort of man to notice, one way or the other. I don't believe he cares for women—no, nor they for him. He's not at all good-looking, and he must be—thirty-five"—she ventured another glance. "Oh, that, at least. His hair is quite gray on the temples. 'Yes, those orchids are beautiful. I never saw anything like them.' I must do my duty and admire properly; he thinks me very unsophisticated, no doubt. I don't think I like him. Did Mrs. Bobby think it would amuse me to—amuse him? But perhaps he is thinking the same thing about me." And she stole another glance at his face, but could not read, in his half-closed eyes and unmoved expression, any indication of his real feelings.
They had made the round of the conservatory, when suddenly he stopped. "Don't you—want a flower for your gown," he asked. He looked about him reflectively. "Let me see," he said. "You would like it to be white." Elizabeth wondered how he knew that. After a moment's hesitation, he chose a white rose and gave it to her. She fastened it carefully in her gown, where its green leaves formed the only touch of color.
"How does it look?" she asked innocently, and raised her eyes to his, where unexpectedly they encountered an odd gleam, of something that seemed neither wholly interest nor yet amusement, and that made her look down again quickly, while the warm color mantled in her cheeks. It was a moment before he answered her.
"It looks well," he said then, quietly, "and suits your gown." And they sauntered back slowly to the drawing-room.
Mrs. Bobby came hurrying in by the opposite door, fastening as she went the diamond star in her black lace.
"My dear child," she said, kissing Elizabeth, "what must you think of me! It is all Bobby's fault for taking us such a long drive, and I see he is not down yet either, the wretch! But Julian has been entertaining you, so it is all right. I'm afraid though that he has been taking away my character unmercifully, telling you that I am always late, and other pleasing things of the kind."
Gerard's smile again softened his face. "Do me justice, Eleanor," he said. "You know I don'tsay worse things of my friends behind their backs than I do to their faces."
She laughed. "I should be sorry for them if you did," she returned. "But here," she went on, as voices were heard in the hall, "here, in good time, are the Rector and his wife. What a blessing they didn't arrive sooner!"
The words had hardly left her lips before the Rector and his wife were ushered in, the latter uttering voluble apologies for being late, and laying all the blame on the erratic behavior of the village hackman, who feeling an utter contempt for people who did not keep their own carriages, reserved the privilege of calling for them at what hour he pleased. The theme of his unpunctuality was so engrossing that the Rector's wife would have enlarged on it for some time, had she not caught sight of Elizabeth, and in her surprise subsided into a chair and momentary silence. And then strolled in Bobby Van Antwerp, fair, well-groomed, amiable, and mildly bored at the prospect of entertaining his neighbors; and immediately afterwards followed the Hartingtons, still more bored at the prospect of being entertained; after which they all went in to dinner, and Elizabeth found herself seated between the Rector and Gerard.
"You live here all the year round, don't you?" the latter said to her, somewhere about the third course, when he had given utterance to several other conventional remarks, and she had grown accustomed to the multiplicity of forks at her plate, and had decided that the light of wax candles, beamingsoftly under rose-colored shades, was eminently becoming to every one. She looked at him now with an odd little challenge in her eyes, called forth, in spite of herself, by the wearied civility of his conversational efforts.
"Yes, I live here all the year round," she said, in her clear, flute-like voice. "I—I'm a country girl, you see."
He smiled. "You are to be congratulated, I think."
"Do you think so?" asked Elizabeth, in genuine surprise.
"Why, yes, I love the country; don't you," he said tranquilly.
She was silent for a moment, her eyes resting absently on the graceful erection of ferns in the centre of the table, which rose, like a fairy island, from a lake of glass. "It's not a conventional thing to say," she answered at last, slowly "but if you want the truth"—
"I always want the truth," said Gerard.
"Well, then, I don't think I do care for the country," she said. "I've had too much of it. I—there are times when I detest it." She spoke with sudden vehemence, and she met his wondering gaze with eyes that were curiously hard.
Gerard's face clouded. "You don't care for the country," he said, slowly, "and yet you live here all the year round?"
"Ah, that's the very reason," she said, lightly. "People always tell you that you don't appreciateyour blessings; but how can you reasonably be expected to, when you don't have any voice in choosing them?"
"If you did, you probably wouldn't like them any better," he retorted. "And it would be more annoying to think that you had had a voice in the matter and had chosen wrong."
"Perhaps," said Elizabeth, "but I should like to make the experiment." And she stared again thoughtfully at the feathery forms of the ferns.
"Well, if you had your choice," said Gerard, lazily, "what would you choose as an improvement on the present state of things?"
She turned towards him with a slight start. "What should I choose," she said, slowly "as an improvement on my life just now?"
"Yes, if you had a fairy Godmother," suggested Gerard.
"With unlimited power?" questioned Elizabeth.
He laughed. "Well, not quite that, perhaps," he said, "but—a fairy Godmother who could give you a good deal. A very charming one, too," he added, in a low voice.
Elizabeth knit her brows and pouted out her full lips, in apparently deep reflection. "If I had a fairy Godmother," she said, musingly, "and she were to give me three wishes—three, you know, is the magic number in the fairy tales—why, I should choose first of all, I think, a season in town"—
"Which you might tire of in a month," suggested Gerard.
"Not at all," said Elizabeth, decidedly, "because my second wish would be for the capacity to be always amused."
"And do you really think," said Gerard, "that you would like that—to go through life as if it were a sort of opera bouffe?"
"Why not?" said Elizabeth. "I'm a frivolous person. I confess I like opera bouffe."
"For an evening, perhaps," said Gerard, "but after a time you'd get tired of it—oh, yes, I'm sure you would—and you'd begin to think"—
"Ah, no, I shouldn't," she interrupted him, eagerly "for that's what my third wish should be. I should ask for the power never to think. Thought—thought is horrible." She spoke the last words very low, more to herself than him, and broke off suddenly, as an odd, frightened look crept into her eyes. Gerard watched her in some perplexity.
"This girl," he said to himself "who must be, I suppose, somewhere about twenty, and has seen, according to Eleanor, nothing of the world, talks sometimes like a thoughtless child, and sometimes like a woman of thirty, and an unhappy one at that. I can't quite make her out." Aloud he said, in an odd, dry voice that he had not hitherto used towards her, "Now that you have pretty well in theory at least, reduced yourself to the level of a brainless doll, why not ask, now that you are about it, for the power not to feel? Then you would really be a complete automaton, and nothing on earth could have power to hurt you."
Elizabeth had grown very pale, and her handswere tightly locked together under the table. "Ah," she said, wearily "I've exhausted my three wishes. And, besides, it's too much to ask. No fairy Godmother, I'm afraid, could give one the power not to feel."
"Be thankful for that," he said, quickly. "A woman who has no capacity for suffering is—is—would be unspeakably repellant."
"Would she?" said Elizabeth, dreamily. "I should think, for my part, that she would be rather enviable." She sat staring absently before her, and Gerard did not try to break the silence. In a moment Mrs. Hartington on his other side claimed his attention, and Elizabeth was not sorry. She felt vaguely resentful towards him for having made her think of unpleasant things, which she had resolved not to do that evening. The dinner went on, and she helped herself mechanically to dish after dish which was pressed upon her. The Rector turned to her and made a few labored remarks, adapted as he thought to her youthful intelligence, and she answered them absently. Bobby Van Antwerp told, in a languid way, a funny story for the benefit of the table, and the conversation grew general for awhile. Dinner was nearly over when Gerard said, turning to her with a pleasant smile:
"I'm not a prophet, and yet I am going to venture on a prediction. In a little while, I think, you'll find your fairy Godmother, and have your season in town, though I don't know if the other things will be thrown in; and then some time in the course of it, I'll ask you if you are satisfied, and you'll tellme perhaps, that you are sick of it all, and are pining for the country, the green fields, and—a—the view of the river"—
He stopped as Elizabeth interrupted him flippantly. "Oh, no, never," she cried. "I'd prefer city streets to green fields any day, and as for the river—I've looked at it all my life, and I'm afraid I've exhausted its possibilities." She was quite herself again, her cheeks were pink; she looked up at him with laughing eyes. "Confess that you think me terribly frivolous," she said; "confess that you disapprove of me entirely."
"On the contrary," said Gerard, with rather a cold smile "I think there is a good deal to be said for your point of view—and as for disapproval, that's a priggish sensation that I hope I don't allow myself to feel towards any one. Wait till I see you in town," he went on, more genially "and then perhaps we'll agree better."
"Ah, but you never will see me in town," she said, sadly.
"Never?" he returned, slightly raising his eye-brows. "That's rather a rash prediction. I think I may have the pleasure of meeting you there before very long. You see I believe in fairy Godmothers," he added, lightly, as Mrs. Bobby gave the signal, and, rising, he pushed back Elizabeth's chair.
She paused for a moment, as she gathered up in one hand the soft white folds of her gown. "I wish your faith could perform miracles," she said. And then she followed dreamily in the wake of the well-worn black satin gown, which had been seen,on many another festive occasion, on the broad back of the Rector's wife.
"He does disapprove of me," the girl thought to herself. "He would have liked me better if I were a little bread-and-butter miss, in white muslin and blue ribbons, who babbled of green fields and taught a class in Sunday school. That's the kind of woman he admires. He thinks me hard and flippant, but—I don't care. At least he dropped that weary, society manner. It is something to have inspired him with an emotion of some sort, even if it happens to be disapproval."
TheRector's wife, after the first surprise, was very glad to see Elizabeth. It made her feel more at home, and she drew her down now eagerly, beside her on the sofa by the fire, whose warmth on that autumn evening modified the somewhat chill atmosphere of the state drawing-room.
"My dear Elizabeth, I never expected to see you here." Increased respect mingled with the surprise in her tone. Elizabeth had certainly gone up several degrees in her estimation. "It's quite an honor to be asked—the Courtenays never are, I know, though don't repeat that I said so. Of course we are asked every year, as is only due, you know, to the Rector's position, my dear; but almost always the children are ill, or something goes wrong, and it's three years now since we've been able to come. It was unfortunate our being late this time. Do you think Mrs. Bobby was much annoyed?" The Rector's wife lowered her voice anxiously, as she for the first time waited for a response.
"Oh, no," Elizabeth was able truthfully to assure her. "I'm sure she wasn't annoyed."
"Well, to be sure, the Hartingtons were later"—in a tone of relief—"but these great swells cando as they please. You look very nice, Elizabeth, very nice indeed. I never saw that dress before. It must be pleasant to have something new occasionally"—and the Rector's wife gave a gentle sigh. "You see I have had the color changed on this dress—red, I think, makes it look quite different, and it is warm and pretty for the autumn. Don't repeat this, Elizabeth, but I wore the same dress here the last time I came to dinner four years ago—only then it was trimmed with pale blue. It was summer, you see, so it looked cool. Do you suppose Mrs. Bobby would remember?"
"Oh, I don't suppose Mrs. Bobby cares"—Elizabeth began absently "much about dress," she added, hastily. She was looking vaguely about her, wondering as the familiar voice meandered on, if she were really at dinner at the Van Antwerps', or prosaically seated as she had so often been before, in the Rectory parlor.
Mrs. Hartington, a large fair woman, very splendidly dressed, had seized upon Mrs. Bobby and was talking to her on a sofa at the other end of the room.
"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty, and—a—not bad form. That gown of hers is effective—it's so simple. I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."
"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby, in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." Thisvery innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.
"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose—a red-haired bar-maid, wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced, dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.
Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither, perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight; but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on making her feel at home.
"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses out at night, but if one alwaysthought of that, one would never go anywhere."
"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A dinner-party is a great event to me."
"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You know, between ourselves"—lowering his voice—"Eleanor doesn't always take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel rather sore—I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we shall see a great deal of you."
Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.
"Come," she said, "I want you to play for me. I'm so fond of music, and I've heard that you play beautifully."
"Ah, but I don't," Elizabeth protested; but still she allowed herself to be led to the piano, without undue reluctance. And then that grand piano, with the name of the maker had been tempting her to try it ever since dinner-time.
After all, it is doubtful if Mrs. Bobby cared so very much for music; but it is possible she knew of some one else who did. Elizabeth had a gift which had come to her, Heaven knows how!—a gift in which far greater pianists are sometimes lacking—thepower to throw herself into what she played and to infuse into it something of her own personality. Her playing seemed no mere, mechanical repetition of what she had been taught, but the unstudied, spontaneous expression of her own thoughts and feelings. As she passed at Mrs. Bobby's request from one thing to another, mingling more set compositions with fragments from operas and songs of the day, the conversation between Mrs. Hartington and Gerard slackened, and he glanced more and more frequently towards the piano.
"Music is rather a bore—isn't it—after dinner this way," drawled Mrs. Hartington, noticing this fact.
"I don't think I agree with you. I'm fond of music," said Gerard, and after awhile he found an opportunity to saunter over to the piano, where Elizabeth sat playing, a little absently now, bits from Wagner. She started and looked up, blushing slightly, as Gerard asked her if she could play the Fire-music.
"I—it is a long time since I have tried it," she began, impelled by some vague instinct to refuse, and then she stopped, and almost unconsciously her fingers touched the keys, as she caught a look that seemed to compel obedience. He smiled.
"Please play it," he said, and though the tone was caressing, there lurked in it a half perceptible note of command. She felt it, as she began to play, and he stood listening, his grave eyes fixed upon her face. "A severe judge," she thought to herself with a proud little thrill of rebellion. Andthen, as she played on, she forgot this thought, and the fear of his criticism; forgot the strange room, and the strange people, and the fact that she was dining at the Van Antwerps'; forgot everything but the eyes fixed upon her, and played as she had never played before.
Elizabeth had always put the best of herself into her music, her finest qualities of brain and soul. But now she put into it something of which she before was hardly conscious, a force and depth and fire, which stirred inarticulately within her, and found expression in the throbbing Wagnerian chords. All the magic of the fairy spell thrilled beneath her touch, as it rose and fell and wove itself in and out amidst the clash of conflicting motives, while Brünnhilde sank ever deeper into slumber, and the flames leaped and danced and played about her sleeping form, and there lurked no premonition in her maiden dreams of that fatal, all-engrossing love, which was yet to awaken her from the serenity of oblivion. Then, as the rippling cadence died away, Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, striking furtive harmonies, till she passed at length into the poignant sweetness, the passionate self-surrender of the second act of Tristan, and so on to the Liebestod, with its swan-song of triumphant anguish, of love supreme even in death. With the last sobbing chord, Elizabeth's hands fell from the keys, and she sat staring straight before her, with eyes that were unusually large and dark.
"Upon my word shecanplay," said Bobby Van Antwerp, and looked, for him, slightly stirred."She has temperament," Mrs. Hartington coldly responded and again honored Elizabeth with a prolonged stare. "My dear child," exclaimed Elizabeth's hostess, "I had no idea you could play like that." The only person who said nothing was the man for whom she had played. He stood motionless by the piano, and his face was white and set. When the applause of the others had ceased, and Elizabeth, blushing now and smiling, looked up at him in involuntary surprise at his silence as if from a dream, he started and then, recovering himself, he spoke mechanically a few conventional words of thanks, and without comment on her performance, turned abruptly away.
Elizabeth still sat, a trifle dazed, at the piano, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her cheeks were burning painfully and she bit her lip to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. She seemed to have fallen suddenly from the clouds back to earth. After a moment she rose and went over to her hostess to say farewell.
"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't seen anything of you."
"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"—this was the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman—"will be furious if he is kept waiting."
She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placedher in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of seeing her again.
"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.
Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more passionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.
He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his den.
"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face, "well, Julian, what did you think of her?"
He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of—whom, Eleanor?" he asked.
"You know whom I mean—Elizabeth Van Vorst."
Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too much red in her hair."
"Too much red in her hair," Mrs. Bobby repeatedblankly; then recovering herself: "But there isn't any, Julian, or very little. I call her hair golden, not red."
"Look at it in the fire-light," Gerard insisted imperturbably, "and you will see that it's a deep red."
"Well, and if it is," said Mrs. Bobby—"not that I admit for a moment that you are right—but if it is, red hair is all the fashion nowadays."
"No doubt," said Gerard. "It's a matter of taste. But for myself I never see a red-haired woman"—He stopped, but went on presently with an effort. "I never see a red-haired woman, that I don't instinctively avoid her. Yes, it's a—a superstition, if you will. I feel that she will be dangerous, somehow or another, perhaps to herself, and certainly to others." A note of unwonted feeling thrilled his voice. He broke off suddenly and stared again into the fire.
Mrs. Bobby sat and watched him in silence. "And so," she said to herself, "thatwoman's hair was red."
"You see," said Gerard, presently, looking at her with a smile, "I've shown the confidence I repose in you by confessing my pet superstition. Miss Van Vorst's hair is notveryred, I admit, except in some lights, but still it's—it's red enough to be dangerous; and that fact, and certain other little things I've noticed about her, incline me to—to avoid her. She puzzles me; I can't quite make her out. Still, she is certainly a girl whom a great many men would—would admire. I'm no criterion, I believe."
"I hope not, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bobby, ruefully"for the sake of most of the women I know. My dear Julian, I despair of ever getting you married."
"My dear Eleanor, if you would only stop trying. Your efforts are, if you will excuse my saying so, a little too transparent. Do you suppose that I imagined this evening that your unpunctuality was entirely accidental?"
"Imagine what you will, you marvel of astuteness," said Eleanor, composedly. "I certainly did not intend to hurry down while I knew Elizabeth to be in such good hands, as I admit yours to be, in spite of certain faults which I hope marriage will improve. And that's why I don't relax my efforts, as you call them, while there is such a superfluity of nice girls in the world, and such an insufficiency of nice men to deserve them. But I'm disappointed about—about Elizabeth Van Vorst," she went on, musingly. "I thought—I don't know why, Julian—but I thought that you would like her."
Gerard started. "I never said that I—didn't like her," he observed.
"No, but your remarks seemed to point in that direction. Now I like her very much. Indeed, to return your confidence with another, Julian"—she looked up with a smile—"I was thinking, if Bobby approves, of asking her to spend the winter with me.
"I knew that," he returned, calmly, "and I approve of the plan highly. It will be a pleasant change for her, as she doesn't seem exactly satisfied with her surroundings; and for you it will be a—a"—he paused, apparently in search of anappropriate word—"an interesting study," he concluded.
She looked up in surprise. "A—a study," she repeated.
"Yes, a study—to see what a girl like that, with the somewhat odd antecedents that you told me about once, and some contradictory characteristics that I think she has—to see how she develops in the storm and stress of a New York season. I—I think you will find it quite interesting, Eleanor."
"I'm glad you think so," she returned, softly. "But—how about yourself, Julian? Couldn't you—just on general psychological principles—condescend to take an interest in it, too?"
A shadow fell on Gerard's face. "Oh, for myself," he said, carelessly, "I'm not easily interested in things nowadays, and above all not—thank Heaven! not in women." He paused. "All the same," he added, "you have the best wishes—for the success of your protégée." And with this he bade her good-night, and left her.
She sat for a long time without moving, and watched the fire flicker and die away.
"On the whole, I'm rather glad her hair is red—in certain lights at least," she observed at last, apparently to the smouldering embers. "It—it makes the study still more interesting."
WhenEleanor Van Antwerp had uttered the words "If Bobby approves," she had given voice to a purely conventional formula; for when, in the eight years of their married life, had Bobby not approved of anything that she might chance to desire? She did not suppose for a moment that he would object to her asking Elizabeth Van Vorst, or any one under the sun, to spend the winter, and when, the next morning, she paid him a visit in his den, where he was supposed to be transacting important business, and proved to be enjoying a novel and a cigar, she was still, as she asked his permission to carry out her new plan, merely paying a graceful concession to the perfunctory and outworn theory of his supremacy. Bobby listened placidly, puffing at his cigar, his clear-cut, clean-shaven profile, outlined against the window-pane seeming absolutely impassive in the gray light of the autumn day. But when she concluded, and was waiting, all aglow with her own enthusiasm, for his answer, he turned his blue eyes towards her with an unusually thoughtful look.
"Well," she said, impatiently, as he still declined to commit himself, "what do you think?"
"What do I think," he repeated, slowly, "of your asking Elizabeth Van Vorst to spend the winter?"
"Why, yes, I don't want to do it, dear, of course, unless you approve."
"Well, then," said Bobby, calmly, "if you ask my candid opinion, I think it would be a mistake. I—I'd rather you didn't Eleanor, really I would."
"Bobby," Eleanor Van Antwerp stared at her husband in incredulous amazement. "Bobby, you don't mean to say that you don't want me to ask her?"
"That's about it." Bobby paused and reflectively knocked the ashes from his cigar. "You see," he went on, argumentatively "this is the way I look at it. The girl is good-looking, and all that, and it's very nice for you to see something of her up here, and I'm only too glad, for it's awfully sweet of you, darling, to come here on my account, and I've always been sorry that there wasn't some woman whom you could be friends with. But to ask a girl to spend the winter, and introduce her to people, is—is a responsibility; and if you want to ask any one—why, I'd rather it were some girl whom I know all about—that's all."
It was not often that Bobby made such a long speech. His wife could hardly hear him to the end of it. "But, my dear Bobby" she exclaimed, breaking in upon his last words, "you know all about Elizabeth Van Vorst!"
"Do I," said Bobby, quietly. "I know that her father was a fool, and that her mother was—worse.Perhaps it would be better if I didn't know quite so much, Eleanor."
"For Heaven's sake, don't harp on what happened centuries ago," cried Mrs. Bobby, who had not been born in the neighborhood. "I've always thought it a shame the way people here snub that poor girl. People can't help what their fathers and mothers were like. If mine were fairly respectable, I'm sure it's no credit to me."
"None at all," Bobby assented, "but still you'd feel rather badly if they were not. It's a natural feeling, Eleanor. I'm not a crank about family, but on general principles, I think a girl whose mother was a lady is more apt to behave herself than one whose mother was—well, quite the reverse."
"And on general principles," said Eleanor, quickly "I agree with you, but I think Elizabeth Van Vorst the exception that proves the rule."
"Then I would rather," said Bobby, tranquilly, "that it were proved under some one else's auspices than yours."
"But that doesn't seem likely, under the circumstances," exclaimed his wife, impatiently. "Really, Bobby, you disappoint me. I never supposed you had such narrow-minded ideas. The girl has been very well brought up by those dear old aunts, and she is perfectly well-bred. And I'm sure there is plenty of good blood in the family as well as bad. The Schuyler Van Vorsts are their cousins, and lots of old Dutch families. I dare say, if we went farenough back, we'd find ourselves related to them, too."
"I dare say," said Bobby, resignedly, "if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related to a lot of queer people. But we don't, thank Heaven! have to ask them to visit us."
"Ah, well, I see you are hopelessly opposed to my plan," said Mrs. Bobby, changing her tactics, "and of course, dear, as I told you before, I wouldn't think of asking any one unless you approve."
"Oh, I don't really care," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback by this sudden surrender. "Ask any one you please. You know I never interfere with your plans. Only don't blame me if they turn out badly—that's all."
"Ah, but they never do," cried Mrs. Bobby, "at least this one won't, I'm sure. I really have set my heart on it, Bobby," she went on, pleadingly. "The truth is, though I don't often speak of it, going out has been a weariness, and that big house in town seems horribly empty since—since the baby died." Her lip trembled and she paused for a moment, while Bobby turned and stared fixedly out of the window at the brilliantly-tinted leaves that a chill east wind was whirling inexorably to the ground. "I thought," she went on presently, in a voice that was not quite steady, "that if I had some one with me to make the house seem a little brighter—some young girl whom I could take with me on the same old round that I'm so sick of—why, I could look at life through her eyes, and it would seem more worth while. But of course Bobby," she concluded,earnestly, "I wouldn't for the world do anything to which you really object."
"My dear Eleanor," said Bobby, turning round at this and speaking for him quite solemnly. "You know I don't object to anything in the world that could make you happy."
And so Mrs. Bobby had her own way.
It was on Saturday that this conversation took place; and on Sunday afternoon they all walked over to the Homestead—Mrs. Bobby, her husband and Gerard. Elizabeth had been prepared for their coming, by a whisper from Mrs. Bobby after church; and tea was all ready for them with Miss Joanna's cakes, and a fire that was welcome after the cold out-doors, where the bleak east wind was still robbing the trees of their glory and ushering in prematurely the dull grayness of November. Mrs. Bobby was not satisfied till she could draw Elizabeth to a distant sofa, and deliver the invitation which she felt, in her impetuous fashion, she could not withhold for another day.
But though the first of Elizabeth's wishes was thus fulfilled with a promptness most unusual outside of fairy tales, she did not accept with the enthusiasm that might have been expected. For a moment, indeed, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed with delight. And then of a sudden the color faded, her eyes fell, she shrank back as if frightened at the idea.
"I—I—it's awfully sweet of you, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, low and hurriedly, "but I—I can't go—I wish I could, but I can't. Don't—don'task me." It was almost as if she had said, "Don't tempt me." Poor Mrs. Bobby, whose intentions were so good, was exceedingly puzzled and not a little piqued.
"Oh, well, if you don't care to come," she said, coldly, in the great-lady manner which she seldom assumed, "of course I shall not urge you. I shouldn't have mentioned the subject, if I had not thought from what you said the other day, that you were really anxious to come to town."
"So I was, so I am—for some reasons; but for others—Dear Mrs. Van Antwerp," the girl pleaded, "don't think me ungrateful. I should love to come beyond anything, but—but I can't. It doesn't seem right," she added, more firmly.
"Doesn't seem right," repeated Mrs. Bobby, wondering, "You mean on your aunts' account. You think it wouldn't be right to leave them?"
"Yes," Elizabeth assented, as if relieved at being furnished with an excuse of some sort, however feeble, "I don't think it would be right to leave them."
"But that is nonsense," cried Mrs. Bobby. "They will miss you terribly, of course, but it will be no worse than when you were at school, and they would be the first to wish you to go, I'm sure."
Elizabeth was quite sure of it, too. Mrs. Bobby, reading this conviction in her eyes, and all the more anxious for the success of her plan, now that it met with so many unexpected obstacles, went on to expatiate on the delights of a season in town, and all the possibilities that life can offer, to one who hasyouth, talent and beauty. Elizabeth listened eagerly with dilating eyes, which she only once withdrew from Mrs. Bobby's face, to glance across to the other end of the room, where Mr. Gerard was leaning forward in an attitude of respectful interest, as he talked to Miss Cornelia. For a moment Elizabeth's eyes rested, half absently perhaps, on the strong lines of his face, while the irrelevant thought passed through her mind: "I wonder what he would think." Then, quick as lightning, the answer followed. "I don't care," she said, under her breath, and drew herself up with a little flash of defiance.
She turned towards Mrs. Bobby. "Do you really want me?" she asked, caressingly.
"Should I have asked you, if I didn't," laughed Mrs. Bobby, triumphant, as she saw that victory was hers.
Elizabeth told the news to her aunts as soon as the visitors had left. Their delight was what she had expected. They were eager in approving her decision, and in assuring her that she should have all the pretty gowns that the occasion required, sustained by the conviction, which occurred simultaneously to the minds of both, that their old black silks, which they had foolishly thought of as shabby, would do admirably another winter. It would be the height of extravagance, as Miss Cornelia afterwards observed to replace them.
"It's just what we have always wished for you," she cried, her little curls all a'flutter with joyful excitement, "and so unexpected—quite like a fairy-tale."
"Yes," Elizabeth assented, "quite like a fairy-tale. There's only one difference," she added to herself, as she left the room, "from every well-regulated fairy-tale that I ever heard of. The fairy Godmother, coach and four, are just a little—too late."
"Mydear Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, "I regret to say it, but you really are growing terribly spoiled."
The winter was far advanced when Mrs. Bobby made this remark. With Lent growing every day nearer, the whirl of gaiety grew ever faster and more furious. It was not often that Mrs. Bobby and her guest had an opportunity for private conversation. But to-night, as it happened, they had merely been out to dinner, and having returned at an unusually early hour, Elizabeth came into Mrs. Bobby's boudoir in her long white dressing-gown, and sat brushing out her masses of wavy hair, while she and her hostess discussed the evening's entertainment, and other recent events of interest.
Mrs. Bobby's eyes rested upon Elizabeth with all the satisfaction with which a connoisseur regards some beautiful object of which he has been the discoverer. Elizabeth's beauty, Elizabeth's conquests, formed to Mrs. Bobby just then a theme of which she never tired. Nor did she fail to make them the text for various sermons that she delivered to Bobby about this time, on the subject of her own wisdom, and his utter failure as a prophet.
"Confess, Bobby, that my plans turn out well,"she would say, "and that I'm not such a fool as you thought me."
"Why, I never," Bobby would protest, "thought you anything of the kind." But she would go on unheeding:
"It would have been a shame for that girl to be buried in the country, and I do take some credit to myself for having rescued her from such a fate. But after that, all the credit is due to Elizabeth. I did what I could, of course, to launch her successfully, but when all is said and done, a girl has to sink or swim on her own merits. Elizabeth takes to society as a duck does to water; it's her natural element. And talk of heredity! There are not many girls with the most aristocratic mothers who can come into a room with the air that she has, as if she didn't care two straws whether any one spoke to her or not, and then of course every one does. Now explain to me, Bobby, if you can, where the girl gets that air."
"I suppose," said Bobby, "if I believed implicitly in heredity (which I am not at all sure that I do) I'd account for it by your own remark that she has plenty of good blood as well as bad."
"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, incredulously, "you can always make a theory fit in somehow."
But though Mrs. Bobby exulted in that air of indifference with which Elizabeth accepted, as if it were a mere matter of course, all the devotion offered up at her feet, she was beginning to realize that the most admirable qualities can be carried too far. And thus it was that she upbraided her this evening withbeing unreasonably spoiled, and not sufficiently appreciating the good things which had fallen to her lot.
"I don't know what you want me to do," Elizabeth said, quietly, when she had listened for some moments to this rather vague accusation. "I'm sure I go everywhere that I'm asked, and that, you must admit, is saying a good deal; I talk to all the men who talk to me, and that again you must admit, means a great deal of conversational effort; and—and I make no distinctions between them whatever, and do my duty on all occasions. I really don't know what more you can expect."
"But that," exclaimed her hostess, "is exactly what I complain of. You go everywhere you are asked—yes, and you never express a preference for any particular place; you talk to the men who talk to you, and you make no distinctions—no, for apparently it's all the same to you, whether it's this man or the other."
"Not quite," said Elizabeth, placidly, "for one man amuses me and another doesn't. But beyond that, I don't—thank Heaven! I don't care." She broke off suddenly, and she drew her comb with unwonted vehemence through her hair.
"I don't know why you should thank Heaven," said Mrs. Bobby, watching her narrowly, "for a fact that is quite abnormal in a girl of your age, who has some of the nicest men in town in love with her. There are times when I think you are quite heartless, and yet—with that hair, and those eyes, and the way you throw yourself into your music,you seem to have abundance of temperament. On the whole, Elizabeth, you are a puzzling combination. What was it Mr. D'Hauteville said of you—that you reminded him of a lake of ice in a circle of fire?"
"Mr. D'Hauteville," said Elizabeth, yawning, "is fond of glittering similes. This one sounds well, but doesn't bear close consideration. The fire, I should think, under the circumstances, would dissolve the ice."
"Perhaps it will," said Mrs. Bobby, "when the right time comes."
"Which will be never," said Elizabeth, with decision. Her hostess smiled as one who has heard such things said before.
"After all," she resumed, after a pause, returning to the grievance which had first started the conversation, "I could forgive you everything else, but this indifference about your picture. One would think that when a great artist asks as a special favor to paint your portrait, you might at least have the decency to go to look at it, when it is on exhibition, and all New York is talking about it."
"That's the very reason," said Elizabeth, "why it strikes me as rather bad taste for me to stand in rapt contemplation before it, while a lot of people are jostling me, and making remarks about my eyes, and hair, and mouth, as if it were I on exhibition, and not Mr. ——'s picture."
"Well, itisyou whom they want to see," said Mrs. Bobby. "The New York public doesn't caremuch for art, but it does take an interest in the people whom it reads about in the papers—a weakness that we needn't quarrel with, since it has made the Portrait Show a success, and given us so many thousands for our hospital."
"Well, at least," said Elizabeth, "I have done my duty in contributing my portrait to the good cause; so don't ask me to be present in actual flesh and blood, and above all not to face such a crowd as there was the other day, when we tried to look at it and my gown was nearly torn off my back in the process."
"You could go early," suggested Mrs. Bobby, "as I did the other day. You have no idea how much better it looks in that light than it did at the studio."
"I am very tired of it, in any light," said Elizabeth. "People have talked to me so much about it. But, if you insist upon it I will go—I will go early. There are some of the other portraits too that I should like to look at, if I can do so in peace." And with this concession, the conversation was allowed to drop for a moment.
It was Elizabeth who resumed it, speaking slowly and tentatively, with many lapses, and eyes carefully turned away from her friend. "You talk," she said, "a great deal of my successes, and I suppose, in a way, I ought to be—satisfied. And of course I am," she added, hastily. "People have been very nice to me. I—I couldn't ask for anything more. And yet—there is one person—I don't know if youhave noticed it—one person with whom I am a distinct failure, who I think almost dislikes me, and that is—your friend Mr. Gerard."
"What, Julian," said Mrs. Bobby, in a tone that was absolutely devoid of expression. "You think he—doesn't like you?"
"I am quite sure of it," said Elizabeth.
"But why," questioned Mrs. Bobby, in apparent bewilderment. "What reason have you for thinking so?"
"A great many, but any one of them would be enough. To begin with, he never speaks to me if he can possibly help himself. His avoidance of me is quite pointed—you surely must have noticed it?" She fixed her eyes anxiously upon Mrs. Bobby.
"I"—Mrs. Bobby checked the impulsive words that rose to her lips. "Julian is—is very peculiar," she said in a non-committal tone. "I don't think he cares for women."
"Perhaps not; but still I have seen him talk to them—in a bored sort of way, it is true. But to me he never talks, in any way whatsoever."
"He never has a chance. You are always surrounded."
"He would have the same chance as the others. No, it isn't that. He disapproves of me; I can feel it, as he looks at me through those dark, half-shut eyes of his, and it gives me an uncomfortable sense of wickedness. He thinks me flippant, and vain, and frivolous, and I am when he is there, or I seem so. When he is listening, I say all the horrid, cynical, heartless things I can think of. I have to saythem, somehow. It is fate. It began the first night that I met him—it was in the country, do you remember?" She paused and again looked questioningly at Mrs. Bobby.
"Yes," the latter answered softly, "I remember."
"I was rather excited that night—it was the first time I had ever been out to dinner. I talked in a flippant sort of way about hating the country, and longing to go out, and wanting to be always amused. It was veryyoung, I suppose." Elizabeth spoke with all the superiority of a girl half-way through her first season towards her more unsophisticated self of a few months before. "He didn't like it. The sort of woman whom he admires knows her catechism, and is satisfied with that situation in life where it has pleased Providence to place her. I shocked him; he has never got over it. He showed me, that very evening, how he disliked me—it was so pointed that it was almost rude. You asked me—do you remember? to play." She stopped.
"I remember," said Mrs. Bobby again softly. "I never heard you play so well."
"I never have—since. I seemed to have, just for the moment, some strange power over the keys—such feelings come to one, you know, sometimes. And then, when I stopped—he had asked me for the Fire-music—I felt, somehow, that he was fond of music—heisfond of it, passionately fond—but when I stopped, he looked at me blankly for a moment, till he suddenly remembered what was expected of him, and thanked me in a cold sort of way and walked off. And—I shouldn't think so muchof that; but since then he has never—never once asked me to play, though he has often heard other people ask me."
"I have noticed," said Mrs. Bobby, quietly, "that you will never play when he is in the room."
"I couldn't," said Elizabeth, "it would have such a dampening effect to feel that there was one person in the room who disliked it, who, no matter how well I played, would always preserve his critical attitude.
"You see that I am reduced to the unflattering alternative that it is myself that he objects to or my playing. But it is the same with everything. There is my picture, for instance. He is the only person I know who has said nothing to me about it, has probably not even seen it."
"That must be rather a relief," said Mrs. Bobby, placidly, "since you are so tired of the subject."
"If I am," said Elizabeth, "that is no reason why he shouldn't go through the conventional formula of telling me that he has seen the picture, and adding something civil about it, as the most ordinary acquaintances never fail to do."
"No, of course," Mrs. Bobby agreed softly, "the most ordinary acquaintances never would. But perhaps he doesn't consider himself exactly that."
"Whatever he considers himself," said Elizabeth, with some heat, "he is not exempt from the common rules of civility. But I suppose he doesn't really admire the picture, and is too painfully truthful to pretend to the contrary." And then shestopped and laughed a little at her own vehemence, but without much spirit. "It really is very illogical," she admitted, "I don't care for Mr. Gerard's admiration, it would probably bore me extremely to have it; and yet—it's not pleasant to be so absolutely—ignored."
Mrs. Bobby was watching her with an odd little gleam in the dark eyes that were almost hidden by her long, curling lashes. "I will tell you," she said, "what it is that he doesn't like. It isn't you, or your playing, or your conversation; it's your hair."
"My hair!" Elizabeth took up mechanically one of her long shining locks and passed it through her fingers. "I may have been inordinately vain," she remarked after a pause, "but I never supposed before that there was much the matter with my hair."
"Nor would most people, I imagine. But he has some odd ideas, and among them, it seems, is a prejudice—a superstition, as he calls it—against red hair."
"But mine isn't red," said Elizabeth, quickly.
"Of course not," said Mrs. Bobby. "He is color blind, as I told him. But there's no use in arguing the point with him. He insists that your hair is red enough to—to be dangerous—those are his words, and he avoids you in consequence. He has had some unfortunate experience in the past, I should imagine, which has given him this prejudice. There, my dear, I shouldn't have told you," Mrs. Bobby went on, leaning back in her chair, and stillwatching Elizabeth narrowly through half-closed lids, "if I didn't know, of course, that it can make no real difference to you what Julian thinks."
"Of course not," Elizabeth made answer mechanically with dry lips, as she still drew her comb absently through the offending hair.
"You have so many admirers," Mrs. Bobby continued serenely, "it can't matter very much that one person should hold aloof. And then I shouldn't care about Julian's opinion, for he never admires any woman. Ever since that unfortunate experience, which happened, I think, when he was very young, he has been a confirmed cynic, avoiding all young girls, and horribly afraid of being married for his money. I really despair now of his ever falling in love; I have talked up almost every girl in town to him, and all in vain. No, even you, Elizabeth, spoiled as you are, couldn't expect to make a conquest of Julian."
"I don't know what I should expect," said Elizabeth, rather coldly, "but I certainly don't wish to. It would hardly be worth while." She rose, with one long look in the glass, and moved wearily towards the door. "I am so very tired, dear," she said. "I think I will say good-night."
"Good-night," said Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. "Sleep well—you need to—and don't waste another thought on that tiresome creature, Julian."
"Oh, I'm not likely to," Elizabeth responded, with rather a pale smile. "I'm much too tired."
And yet she did think of him more than once, asshe stood before her mirror, arranging her hair into two heavy braids, which reached below her waist, and repeating to herself that, as Mrs. Bobby had said, it could matter little about the one dissenting voice in the general chorus of admiration which had attended her triumphant career. In spite of which assurance, her last thoughts as she fell asleep might have been somewhat surprising to those who, having watched that career entirely from the outside, regarded her as the most fortunate being in the world.
Elizabeth's aunts were on the whole, more to be envied than the girl herself that winter. There was no alloy in their happiness, no under-current of dissatisfaction, even though they wore their old black silks, and Miss Joanna's friend, the butcher, was heard to complain somewhat bitterly of her sudden parsimony in regard to joints of meat. What did it matter? They would have dressed cheerfully in sackcloth and lived on bread and water, for the sake of such glowing accounts of Elizabeth's triumphs as Mrs. Bobby constantly transmitted, or of the girl's own brilliant letters which seemed to breathe the radiant satisfaction of a mind without a care.
Elizabeth's aunt at Bassett Mills also watched her career, which was chronicled at that time in the papers. Poor Aunt Rebecca, after a hard day's work, reading her niece's name, and possibly a description of her costume in the list of guests at some smart festivity, would look up, awe-struck, at Amanda. "Only to think," she would say, withthe old contradictory note, half pride, half jealousy "to think that it should be Malvina's girl!"
But Amanda, still pale and wasted from the fever with her hair quite long and very soft and wavy, would give an odd, furtive look from her light eyes and say nothing.