Mr. Tremain came towards her grave and unsmiling, and with something of the old dark anger on his face, that ten years ago had frightened her and deterred her from uttering the few words of reconciliation hovering on her lips; this anger was all the more pronounced because of his character costume of light livery. One does not naturally associate buckskin tops and a striped waistcoat with a countenance of gloomy disapproval.
Miss Hildreth took in the situation at a glance, and laughed out at him, one of her cold light mocking laughs, that angered Philip with its ring of insincerity.
"Well, my Knight of the Rueful Countenance," she exclaimed, "you look not only bored, but in a rage! Ah, my dear Philip, when will you learn how foolish and banale a thing it is to expend your reserve emotions on trifles? We Americans are accused of being a race incapable of experiencing any grand passion, either in conception or realisation. Perhaps it is because after cultivating our sensibilities to the highest pitch we are content to expend them on trivialities. I remember a clever Englishman once telling me that we as a nation have no measurable idea of passion save in the abstract; we appreciate wit and humour, subtle argument, keen incisive reasoning, but as to the heights and depths of one terrible all-mastering, all-absorbing emotion, it is as a dead letter to us. Our highest expression of nervous force results in an exaggerated friendship, or a marriage of convenience; we are simply incapable of what the French call une grande passion."
She stopped with another little laugh, but Mr. Tremain made no reply, so with the slightest possible shrug of her shoulders she continued:
"For example—and pardon my using you as a peg upon which to hang my argument—to look at you at this moment one would declare that nothing less than a complete collapse of the entire social system could account for such an expression of abject wretchedness. How can one be supposed to know that it is the result of nothing more tragic than an ill-starched necktie, or a poor-fitting coat?"
Again she laughed, and Philip felt the blood surge up to his face at her taunting raillery.
"I should feel honoured at being considered worthy your mockery," he said, quickly, "only that this time I cannot plead guilty to the impeachment; my costume, even to its insignificant details, is, I beg to state, beyond reproach. I cannot complain even of a rumpled tie, or an uncomfortable coat."
She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "You are fortunate and to be congratulated. Does not Madame de Rémusat tell us of the annoyance caused the great Napoleon by too tight arm-holes, and of Josephine's tears over the loss of one Cashmere, out of her two or three score? You see, my dear Philip, even the heroes of our immediate past were not above acknowledging their little weaknesses. Such items are the crumpled rose-leaves and parched peas of greatness. Dare we of a lesser mould scoff at them?"
She turned away from him as she spoke, leaving him with a decided feeling of having been taken at a disadvantage. His call followed almost immediately, so he had no time to reply; but the remembrance of her mockery remained with him, and added a touch of bitterness and reality to the situations of the play, in which he and she bore reversed relations to those of real life.
The drama selected by Esther Newbold, The Ladies' Battle, is too well-known and too great a favourite to require description. Perhaps of all drawing-room comedies it is the most pleasing and the most comprehensive. Those who have seen the foremost actresses of our day personate the young and beautiful Countess d'Autreval—who is not ashamed, though fully conscious, of her love for Henri de Flavigneul, and who bravely relinquishes it in favour of her girlish niece, Léonie de Villegontier—will remember what scope can be shown in the development of that character, whose fundamental attributes seem at first sight to be those of impulse and self-gratification.