“To be sure,” he murmured, as though his memory had been jogged. “To be sure,” he repeated, his eyes upon the velvet V of his wife’s back.
“No matter why you made the gift, Mr. Cabot, it is an event in my life. To-night is the first time I’ve ever been in evening dress.”
At last he looked down at her and interestedly.
Dolores felt both pleased and abashed. Never, she realized, had she worn anything so becoming as this gown. Its delicate gray increased, rather than shamed the pallor and texture of her skin. Its rose seemed dimly to reflect the red of her lips, its mauve the deep purple of her eyes. Her hair, done low on her neck to hide as much as possible of the gleaming flesh which had not before been exposed to the eyes of man, made an oval, ebony frame for her face.
“Never having been a girl myself, I don’t suppose I realize just what the first one means: Really, I didn’t suppose I had such good taste.” With which ambiguous comment he withdrew both eyes and interest. Evidently the subject of herself was dismissed.
Despite the lessons of her past, Dolores felt disappointed. The Rev. Alexander Willard had looked at her often and long. Seff had looked at her and looked again. As she went about the city, strangers filled her with uneasiness by their stares. She supposed she should be glad that one man was superior to the attraction of looks which she had been forced to conclude were unusual. She should be glad, yes. And yet, she caught herself wishing that this man, on this occasion——
Through that never-to-be-forgotten dinner—the first formal one of her life—she made effort to adapt herself as a unit of the quartette and to attend Mrs. Cabot’s converse with something the responsiveness of Rufus Holt. Her awe of Bradish and the second butler she conquered enough to sample the dishes passed. She became sufficiently accustomed to the candle-light to appreciate this and that detail—the drawn-work dinner cloth, the Sheffield service, the gleam of a fountain playing Nature’s music in the conservatory beyond. She commented on the match of the fulvid, velvety orchids that formed the centerpiece with their hostess’ gown. With the rest she sipped of a vintage recommended by their host as from the fore-stocked Cabot cellar.
“You’ll go far these dry days and drink—well, perhaps too much, to find better Burgundy than this,” he said. “It is neither too thick nor too thin; neither sweet nor sour; smooth and gentle, yet not heady. And the color—— Hasn’t it the rich red of dreams come true?”
“Speaking of color, John,” the attorney suggested, “are you noticing the rare contrast between two ladies fair to-night?”
John Cabot nodded and glanced abstractedly into his wife’s pleased, expectant face, but omitted altogether to look the governess’ way.