Her hair was but slightly touched with gray and she was still doing all she could to conceal the blanched tendrils. She made an erection of her tresses, after the tongs had crimped every strand, till the formation suggested an overturned cornucopia; she then inset it with tortoiseshell pins. Her dress was a plum-coloured brocade with black velvet train, and elbow sleeves of brocade. Her fichu and her sleeves were trimmed with Honiton lace. “A gentlewoman should adorn her station,” was one of her favourite axioms. Three fourths of the money spent on dress in her household went to assist her in living up to the saying. The rest was sufficient to buy girlish muslins for Corinne, who was “too young for silks,” being barely eighteen.
Mabel Crewe, who was twenty-five—and handsome, in a slim, dusky, reserved fashion (with sulphurous suggestions underneath it)—was provided for with her aunt’s cast-offs, which her own clever fingers converted into passable, though not suitable, raiment for her comely young body. She was in black silk to-night. The long skirt hid the fact that her hose were not silk and that her slippers were rubbed in places. Her well-shaped white arms and slender throat were oddly set in Aunt Emma’s old peau de soie, but perhaps whiter by contrast.
This last was Wilton Howard’s opinion as his gaze sought and lingered on her. He had driven up so closely upon the other two vehicles that the sound of his wheels had not been heard. He stood on the verandah, divesting himself of his topcoat. Anticipation of the only happiness she knew—her few words and stolen moments with this man—made Mabel Crewe keener than the others to detect his noiseless presence. She turned and saw him, this handsome, well-bred, shallow young gentleman, surveying her with admiration in his eyes and a frown between his brows. Perchance the frown meant that he was resentful of her power to stir him, since nothing could come of it but disappointment. In Roseborough, persons of his and Miss Crewe’s birth and kindred could not marry on nothing but love. Their families, and Roseborough, demanded of them that they settle themselves properly in life, to keep up appearances.
Her eyes met his and a movement went through her, like the slightest swaying of a tree; but, after the first instant, her face revealed nothing. It was proud, indifferent—cold, one might almost have said, but for the undercurrents tingling through her and stirring the depths of her eyes.
“Good-evening, Mr. Howard,” she called in her leisurely voice—a voice refined and musical in quality and indifferent in its inflections. She turned her back on him and moved to the settee where Dr. Wells and Mrs. Lee were still in conversation.
“Mr. Howard has arrived, and I am sure Judge Giffen and Mr. Andrews cannot be far off. Doctor, you will presently be rejoicing in beating Aunt Emma at cards. That is, if she is not your partner. If she is your partner, then you can rejoice in being beaten for her sake, with many stripes.”
“I heard every word of that, Mabel,” Mrs. Witherby declared, with a little more asperity than usual. “You delight to undermine my intellect in the ears of my friends. As to cards, I frequently say, and without egotism, that there is not a woman in Roseborough who plays a better hand than I.”
Corinne Witherby giggled at this.
“I heard the Judge say one evening that no doubt there is no woman in Roseborough who plays a better hand than some he has seen you hold, Mamma; and that he is positive no other woman in the world would play a good hand in the way he’s seen you play some of yours.”
“Corinne!”