“I wrote you lots of letters, mother, but I had no way of posting them to you. After leaving Edinburgh we sailed northward to Lerwick and there I mailed you a long letter. It will be here in a few days, no doubt, but their mail boat only carries mail ‘weather permitting,’ and after we left Lerwick, all the way to Aberdeen we had a roaring wind in our teeth. I don’t think it was weather the ill-tempered Pentland Firth would permit mail to be carried over it. How is father?”
“As well as he will be until the Reform Bill is passed. You are just in time for Katherine’s party.”
“I thought I might be so, for father told me he was sure dress and mantua-makers would not have you ready for company in two weeks.”
“Father was right. We may get people to weave the cloth by steam but when it comes to sewing the cloth into clothes, there is nothing but fingers and needles and some woman’s will.”
Then they talked of the preparations made and the guests that were expected, and the evening passed so pleasantly that it was near midnight when the youths went away. And before that time the squire had sent a note to his wife telling her he would not leave The House until the sitting broke up. This note was brought by a Commons Messenger, for the telegraph was yet a generation away.
So Mistress Annis slept well, and the next day broke in blue skies and sunshine. After breakfast was over she went to the Leyland Mansion to see if her help was required in any way. Not that she expected it, for she knew that Jane was far too good an organizer to be unready in any department. Indeed she found her leisurely drinking coffee and reading The Court Circular. Its news also had been gratifying, for she said to her mother as she laid down the paper, “All is very satisfactory. There are no entertainments to-night that will interfere with mine.”
Katherine was equally prepared but much more excited and that pleased her mother. She wished Katherine to keep her girlish enthusiasms and extravagant expectations as long as possible; Jane’s composure and apparent indifference seemed to her unnatural and later she reflected that “Jane used to flurry and worry more than enough. Why!” she mentally exclaimed, “I have not forgot how she routed us all out of our beds at five o’clock on the morning of her wedding day, and was so nervous herself that she made the whole house restless as a whirlpool. But she says it is now fashionable to be serenely unaffected by any event, and whatever is the fashionable insanity, Jane is sure to be one of the first to catch it.”
On this occasion her whole household had been schooled to the same calm spirit, and while it had a decided air of festivity, there was also one of order, and of everything going on as it ought to do. No hurrying servants or belated confectionery vans impeded the guests’ arrival. The rooms were in perfect order. The dinner would be served at the minute specified, and the host and hostess were waiting to perform every hospitable duty with amiable precision.
Katherine did not enter the reception parlors until the dinner guests had arrived and expectation was at a pleasant point of excitement. Then the principal door was thrown open with obvious intent and Squire Annis and his family were very plainly announced. Katherine was walking between her father and mother, and Mrs. Josepha Temple, leaning on the arm of her favorite nephew Dick, was a few steps behind them.
There was a sudden silence, a quick assurance of the coming of Katherine, and immediately the lovely girl made a triumphant entry into their eyes and consciousness. She was dressed in white radiant gauze, * dotted with small silver stars. It fell from her belt to her feet without any break of its beauty by ruffle or frill. The waist slightly covered the shoulders, the sleeves were full and gathered into a band above the elbows. Both waist and sleeves were trimmed with lace traced out with silver thread, and edged with a thin silver cord. Her sandals were of white kid embroidered with silver stars, her gloves matched them. She was without jewelry of any kind, unless the wonderfully carved silver combs for the hair which Admiral Temple had brought from India can be so called. Thus clothed, all the mystery and beauty of the flesh was accentuated. Her fine eyes were soft and shining, with that happy surprise in them that belongs only to the young enthusiast, and yet her eyes were hardly more lambent than the rest of her face, for at this happy hour all the ancient ecstasy of Love and Youth transfigured her and she looked as if she had been born with a smile.