“You mustn’t be tyrannical!” she still laughed gently as she withdrew her hands; “I must go and see Katherine.”
“Yes, go and dress now, Hilda.” Mrs. Archinard spoke from the sofa, having watched the scene with a slight air of injury; Hilda’s unwonted gayety constituted a certain grievance. “Mr. Odd dines with us, and I really can’t bear to see you in that costume. The skirt especially is really ludicrous, my dear. I am glad that I don’t see you walking through the streets in it.”
“Hilda knows that her feet bear showing,” remarked the Captain, crossing his own with complacency; “she has her mother’s foot in size and mine in make—the Archinard foot; narrow, arched instep, and small heel.
“Really, Charles, I think the Maxwells will bear the comparison!” Mrs. Archinard, though she smiled, looked distinctly distressed.
Hilda found her sister before the long mirror in her room, Taylor fastening the nasturtium velvet. Katherine always had a commanding air, and it was quite regally apparent to-night; all things seemed made to serve her, and Taylor’s crouching attitude symbolic.
Hilda put her arms around her neck.
“My dear, dear Kathy, I am so glad! To think that good things do come true!”
“You like my choice, pet?”
“No one else would have done,” cried Hilda; “he is the only man I ever saw whom I could have thought of for you. Why, Katherine, from that first day when you told me you had met him at the dinner, I knew it would happen.”
“Yes, I certainly felt a prophetic sense of proprietorship from the first,” Katherine owned musingly. She looked over her sister’s shoulder at the fine outline of her own head and neck in the glass.