“You mean Norman?” she said. “I told him I was too busy to play—but he is so foolish!”
“Go and be foolish, too,” said Esmeralda. She bent and kissed Lilias impulsively.
Lilias looked a little startled, and went out rather slowly, and Esmeralda went up to her own room. As the day wore on, the coming dinner-party began to make itself felt, and quite half an hour before the usual time Barker came in to dress her. Esmeralda was lying down; she had been pacing up and down the room until she had nearly worn herself out, and she received Barker with a listlessness and indifference which filled that young woman with dismay.
“I thought you’d like to be dressed in good time, my lady, so that you can go down to the drawing-room before the party arrives. Of course, you’ll wear white velvet with the diamonds and sapphires?”
“I’ll wear anything you like,” said Esmeralda.
Barker got out the magnificent dress with a reverent care, and Esmeralda submitted herself to the robing with a dull kind of apathy. Barker grew anxious and tried to rouse her mistress’s interest.
“If you’d only just look in the glass, my lady,” she said. “It really is superb! And there won’t be anything like it in the room. They used to talk about Lady Desford’s pearl satin, but this completely effaces it.”
“Effaces is a good word,” said Esmeralda. She turned to the tall pier glass and looked at the reflection. She knew that Barker had spoken the truth—it was superb. The combination of the soft tones of the white velvet with the magnificent diamonds and sapphires was simply perfect. Devoid of vanity as she was, a little thrill ran through her; she realized that it was not only the dress and the gems which were beautiful. Then, suddenly, with a pang, she remembered that it was all of no use; the man she loved loved her not. He had married her for her money; to him her beauty would be as nothing; he would have no eyes for any one but Ada Lancing. She turned suddenly to Barker.
“Take these off!” she said. Every one, as they gazed at her, would say that the Marquis of Trafford had married her for the wealth which the dress and the jewels proclaimed. “Take them off!”