"Oh, I don't suppose Mrs. Bobby cares"—Elizabeth began absently "much about dress," she added, hastily. She was looking vaguely about her, wondering as the familiar voice meandered on, if she were really at dinner at the Van Antwerps', or prosaically seated as she had so often been before, in the Rectory parlor.
Mrs. Hartington, a large fair woman, very splendidly dressed, had seized upon Mrs. Bobby and was talking to her on a sofa at the other end of the room.
"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty, and—a—not bad form. That gown of hers is effective—it's so simple. I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."
"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby, in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." This very innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.
"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose—a red-haired bar-maid, wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced, dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.
Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither, perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight; but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on making her feel at home.
"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses out at night, but if one always thought of that, one would never go anywhere."
"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A dinner-party is a great event to me."
"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You know, between ourselves"—lowering his voice—"Eleanor doesn't always take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel rather sore—I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we shall see a great deal of you."
Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.