When he reached the parlour Mrs. Ballantyne and Ysobel were waiting—Mrs. Ballantyne ablaze with rubies and diamonds, Ysobel slim and white and golden in an expensively plain white dress with golden spangles. Mrs. Ballantyne rang for a servant. “See that the doors leading into the hall downstairs are closed,” she said.
The servant returned and announced that the way was clear. The three descended the grand stairway rapidly, entered the carriage, and drove away—“with two on the box.”
Presently Ysobel laughed. “You should have seen Susan, Lord Frothingham,” she said. “She was rigged up in a black alpaca made with a basque.”
“Alpaca?” asked Frothingham. “What’s that? And what’s a basque?”
“Alpaca is—well, it’s a stuff they wear out West in the country when they dress up. I suppose they wear it because the country is so dusty, and black alpaca catches and shows every bit of dust. And when you touch it it makes your teeth ache and the gooseflesh rise all over you. A basque—it’s a sort of waist, only it’s little and tight and short on the hips and low in the collar, and it pulls under the arms—I can’t describe a basque. It has to be seen. My idea of future punishment is to dress for a thousand years in black alpaca made with a basque, and to have to rub your hands over it every five minutes.”
XII
POPE, as Mrs. Ballantyne explained to Frothingham, was an Eastern Senator—a multi-millionaire, sent to the Senate because he practically supported, that is, “financed,” the machine of his party in his State, besides making large contributions to its national machine. “So the ‘Boss,’ as they call the leader of the party in that State,” she said, “sold Mr. Pope one of the Senatorships, keeping the other for himself. Mr. Ballantyne is the leader, the master, of his party in his State and, while he’s too modest to tell it, is one of the masters of the party in the nation. He could be President if it weren’t for the disgusting prejudice among the people against all who happen to have a little something”—“a little something” being Mrs. Ballantyne’s modest way of speaking of their millions. “But,” she went on, “old Mr. Pope is a nonentity. He sits in his seat and votes the way they tell him to and is nice to everybody. Mr. Ballantyne suspects he’s getting ready to buy the Vice-Presidency.”