“I hope you weren’t too much disappointed,” Lady—— said to Odd, just before he was going; “is she not a charming girl?”
“She really is; the disappointment was only comparative. It was Hilda whom I knew so well. The dearest little girl.”
“I have not seen much of her,” Lady—— said, with some vagueness of tone. “I have called on Mrs. Archinard, a very sweet woman, clever, too; but the other girl was never there. I don’t fancy she is much help to her mother, you know, as Katherine is. Katherine goes about, brings people to see her mother, makes a milieu for her; such a sad invalid she is, poor dear! But Hilda is wrapt up in her work, I believe. Rather a pity, don’t you think, for a girl to go in so seriously for a fad like that? She paints very nicely, to be sure; I fancy it all goes into that, you know.”
“What goes into that?” Odd asked, conscious of a little temper; all seemed combined to push Hilda more and more into a slightly derogatory and very mysterious background.
“Well, she is not so clever as her sister. Katherine can entertain a roomful of people. Grace, tact, sympathy, the impalpable something that makes success of the best kind, Katherine has it.”
Katherine’s friendly, breezy frankness had certainly amused and interested Odd at the dinner-table, but Lady ——’s remarks now produced in him one of those quick and unreasoning little revulsions of feeling by which the judgments of a half-hour before are suddenly reversed. Katherine’s cleverness was that of the majority of the girls he took down to dinner, rather voulu, banal, tiresome. Odd felt that he was unjust, also that he was a little cross.
“There are some clevernesses above entertaining a roomful of people. After all, success isn’t the test, is it?”
Lady—— smiled, an unconvinced smile—
“You should be the last person to say that.”
“I?” Odd made no attempt to contradict the evident flattery of his hostess’ tones, but his ejaculation meant to himself a volume of negatives. If success were the test, he was a sorry failure.