Cornelia’s good looks terrified her the more. Probably there were other girls as pretty as that among Cornelia’s friends, the people she was to meet to-night. And Cornelia’s rush into the room, her flashing greeting, so impulsive, and her quick flight away were all flavoured with that dashingness with which Elsie felt she could never compete. “My, but you’re lovely!” was sweet of Cornelia, Elsie thought. But girls usually said things like that to their girl visitors—especially when the visitors had just arrived. Besides, anybody could see that Cornelia was as kind as she was pretty.
“My, but you’re lovely!” was pleasant to hear, even from an impulsive cousin, yet it was of no great help to Elsie. She went on with her dressing, looking unhappily into the glass and thinking of what irony there had been in her father’s persistence. “To make me have a ‘good time’!” she thought. “As if I wouldn’t have had one at home, if I could! But of course he didn’t know that.”
She was so afraid of what was before her, and so certain she was foredoomed, that during this troubled hour she learned the meaning of an old phrase describing fear; for she was indeed “sick with apprehension.” She took some spirits of ammonia in a glass of water as a remedy for that sickness. “Oh, Papa!” she moaned. “What have you done to me?”
The maid who had brought her to her room reappeared with a bouquet of rosebuds and lilies of the valley, to be worn. “It’s from one of the gentlemen that’s coming to dinner, Miss Cornelia said. He sent two. Pr’aps I could pin it on for you.”
Elsie let her render this service, and when it was done the woman smiled admiringly. “It certainly becomes you,” she said. “I might say it looks like you.”
Elsie regarded her with a stare so wide and blank that the maid thought her probably haughty. “Excuse me, ma’am. Could I be of any more assistance?”
“No, thank you,” Elsie said, still staring, and turned again to the mirror as the flatterer left the room.
The bouquet was beautiful, and, before the evening was over, the unknown gentleman who had sent it would be of a mind that the joke was on him, Elsie thought. The misplaced blarney of an Irishwoman had amazed but not cheered her; and the clock on the mantel-shelf warned her that the time was ten minutes before seven. She took some more ammonia.
The next moment into the room came her aunt, large, decorously glittering, fundamentally important. She was also warm-hearted, and she took her niece in her arms and kissed her as if she wanted to kiss her. Then she did as Cornelia had done—held her at arm’s length and looked at her. “You dear child!” she said. “I’ve wanted so long to get hold of you. A man never knows how to bring up a girl; she has to do it all herself. You’ve done it excellently, I can see, Elsie. You have lovely taste; that’s just the dress I’d have picked out for you myself. And to think I haven’t seen you since your dear mother left us! Cornelia hasn’t seen you for much longer than that—you and she haven’t had a glimpse of each other since you were ten or eleven years old.”
“Yes,” Elsie said. “I saw her a little while ago.” She gulped feebly, and by a great effort kept her voice steady. “Aunt Mildred, how proud of her you must be! I want to tell you something: I think Cornelia is the very prettiest girl I’ve ever seen in my whole life.”