Esther used to shrug her shoulders and smile shrewdly and unpleasantly whenever this description of what she chose to consider the family skeleton was given out in her hearing; she told every one, quite frankly, that her own father was in a madhouse.
Judith Quixano came up a little behind the others, with a hesitation in her manner which was new to her, and of which she herself was unconscious.
She was twenty-two years of age, in the very prime of her youth and beauty; a tall, regal-looking creature, with an exquisite dark head, features like those of a face cut on gem or cameo, and wonderful, lustrous, mournful eyes, entirely out of keeping with the accepted characteristics of their owner.
Her smooth, oval cheek glowed with a rich, yet subdued, hue of perfect health; and her tight-fitting fashionable white evening dress showed to advantage the generous lines of a figure which was distinguished for stateliness rather than grace.
Reuben Sachs had looked straight at this girl on entering the room; but he shook hands with her last of all, clasping her fingers closely and searching her face with his eyes. They were not cousins, her relationship to the Leunigers coming from the father’s side; but there had always been between them a fiction of cousinship, which had made possible what is rare all the world over, but rarer than ever in the Jewish community—an intimacy between young people of opposite sexes.
“I thought I had better come while I could. We were before our time,” said Reuben as they sat down, the whole party of them grouped close together, with the exception of Ernest, who returned to his solitaire board, a plaything which afforded him perpetual occupation. After several years of practice he had never arrived at leaving the glass marble in solitary state on the board; but he lived in hopes.
“While you could! Before, in fact, fashion had again claimed Mr. Reuben Sachs for her own,” cried Esther.
“I don’t know about fashion,” answered Reuben with perfect good temper; Esther was Esther, and if you began to mind what she said, you would never know where to stop; “but there are a hundred things to be attended to. I suppose every one is going to the grandpater’s feed to-morrow?”
Every one was going; then, turning to Leo, Reuben said: “When do you go up?”
“Not till October 14th.”