Chapter XIII
"And you 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're sure my skirt hangs well? I wanted a white rose, but we have no pretty ones left." A slight cloud 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 more triumphant. 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.