This was the rose-and-silver garment taken from the chest in the morning and hung upon the Louis chair under linen covers. She disposed the lilac-bud silk in the carved mahogany closet, against the morrow. As she exchanged her embroidery petticoat for one of organdie and Valenciennes, it did not occur to her to ask herself how she would like to have to dress in future on a cake-maker’s wages. Her rapid fingers, removing hair pins, let down the massy bright waves of her hair which separated into ringlets just above her waist. It was not a pure yellow gold, that thick waving fall of hair; it was mingled with light brown and reddish tints, which made the whole, when pyramided in curls on her small head, as vital, brilliant, alluring, and indefinable as the inner nature of its owner. It was hair that in its variety of shades was truly indicative of milady’s mercurial spirit; for even her occasional sobriety of mood resembled the sober brown strands that twisted in with the auburn and gold threads; it was a sobriety inclined to curl. Her own complaint about her hair was that it never look combed. Five minutes after she had demurely parted it in the centre the parting would disappear and the glistening waves, mocking the damp brush’s authority, would rise and undulate and interlace again at their pleasure.
She was in a hurry this evening and so let her curls please themselves, looping the ends through an antique circular Spanish comb of pale gold and seed pearls. She shook the dress out lovingly. She had never worn it.
Slowly, so that none of the small raptures of sliding silk should be missed, she let it descend, enveloping her, carefully keeping it from touching her hair, till it skirted her ankles evenly and her face looked over the top and flushed with pleasure to see itself so framed.
The material was a stiff silk of a quality too old for her if the colour and make of the gown had been different; but the rich shade, that was a rose-old-rose—neither so placid as old rose nor so positive as pink—and the semi-pompadour fashion combined with the weave (which would “stand by itself”) made her look quaint. She was neither of one period nor another, nor was her gown old or young. The picture presented was radiant young womanhood of all time in its perfection. The gown had a partial overdress of dull silver gossamer, finished in a broad silver lace, in which the vine figure was worked in a brighter silver, toned again by gray-green leaves in the clusters. The short sleeves were of the gossamer over rose net, fitted sheerly and smoothly to the arm. A cuff of the lace turned back from the elbow. A gossamer and lace collar stood up from the back of the bodice, which was cut in a narrow low square in front. There were touches of rose in the pattern of the lace of the collar; reversely, the narrow, smooth, stiff, rose girdle had silver eyelet holes and a hint of the vine tracery. Rose stockings and silver shoes, with buckles made of clusters of tiny roses, completed her costume.
She surveyed herself for some time with a delight that needed no formulated thought to express it. When she could endure parting with the vision the Orleans mirror gave her, she tossed a white wrap over her and went downstairs. Presently she giggled.
“Oh, wouldn’t the Pelham-Hews and Palametta and The Kilties” (her name for the MacMillans) “rave if I were to go to Mr. Falcon’s breakfast in this glorious thing! They needn’t worry. I shall be a dowd to-morrow. But to-night! The shock may kill Mrs. Witherby—and incite Mr. Andrews and the Judge—but I’ll end my Wonderful Day in splendour, even if it must be lonely splendour.” Whatever rashness her gown proclaimed, she would refuse censure for it; it was her right to dare all things on her Wonderful Day, which could not be said to have passed until midnight struck.
The six o’clock bell, the last one to toll for the day, had rung ere she left the mirror.
The fall of gold light through the clear air of the valley, with the western sky giving just a hint of sunset and the river shining like molten glass, wooed her to the garden again. Some of the little annuals had already closed their eyes for the night. The insects and birds were on homeward flight. She went on, to the incline where the orchard began. From a point, here, she could look down at the gleaming river with the picture framed in arching boughs. She found something mystical in this view and loved it above all others, especially at this hour, when the last yellow rays fell like a slanting mist and the shadowed spaces under the huge apple trees were cool and dark.
“Regarding each other and yielding to the charm of the sunset and the music, they did not observe a black-whiskered man who was crawling through the orchard”