Kent looked up, eyed her sharply for just an instant, and smiled.
“Good evening, Mrs. Fleetwood,” he said calmly. “Ready for the ball, I see. We got in late.” He went on spreading butter upon his bread, evidently quite unimpressed by her magnificence.
The other man stared fixedly at his plate. It was a trifle, but Val suddenly felt foolish and ashamed. She took a step or two toward the kitchen, then retreated; down the hall she went, up the stairs and into her own room, the door of which she shut and locked.
“Such a fool!” she whispered vehemently, and stamped her white-shod foot upon the carpet. “He looked perfectly disgusted—and so did that other man. And no wonder. Such—it's vulgar, Val Fleetwood! It's just ill-bred, and coarse, and horrid!” She threw herself upon the bed and put her face in the pillow.
Some one—she thought it sounded like Manley—came up and tried the door, stood a moment before it, and went away again. Arline's voice, sharpened with displeasure, she heard speaking to Minnie upon the stairs. They went down, and there was a confusion of voices below. In the street beneath her window footsteps sounded intermittently, coming and going with a certain eagerness of tread. After a time there came, from a distance, the sound of violins and the “coronet” of which Arline had been so proud; and mingled with it was an undercurrent of shuffling feet, a mere whisper of sound, cut sharply now and then by the sharp commands of the floor manager. They were dancing—in her honor. And she was a fool; a proud, ill-tempered, selfish fool..
With one of her quick changes of mood she rose, patted her hair smooth, caught up a wrap oddly inharmonious with the gown and slippers, looped her train over her arm, tool her violin, and ran lightly down-stairs. The parlor, the dining room, the kitchen were deserted and the lights turned low. She braced herself mentally, and, flushing at the unaccustomed act, rapped timidly upon the door which opened into the office—which by that time she knew was really a saloon. Hawley himself opened the door, and in his eyes bulged at sight of her.
“Is Mr. Fleetwood here? I—I thought, after all, I'd go to the dance,” she said, in rather a timid voice, shrinking back into the shadow.
“Fleetwood? Why, I guess he's gone on over. He said you wasn't going. You wait a minute. I—here, Kent! You take Mrs. Fleetwood over to the hall. Man's gone.”
“Oh, no! I—really, it doesn't matter—”
But Kent had already thrown away his cigarette and come out to her, closing the door immediately after him.