"Good Heavens!" he exclaimed. "That woman endorse you! It would be complete ruin."
"Mrs. Diggs is my friend, and as such I must insist upon your always speaking with respect of her in my presence," reprimanded Claire, stoutly.
"Respect? Why, of course I respect her. Not physically; she's constructed on too painful a plan of zigzags. But in all other ways I consider her delightful. She's got a big, warm heart in that angular body of hers. She's as liberal as the air. But she isn't good form—she isn't a swell, and no earthly power could make her so. Of course she doesn't think she has really lost caste. She may tell you that she does, but privately she has an immense belief in her ability to play the fine lady at a moment's notice. I don't know any woman more flatly disapproved of by her own original set. Shall I tell you what this idea of hers would result in if practically carried out? A distinct injury to yourself. She has a crowd of queer friends whom she wouldn't slight for the world; she's too consistently good-hearted. She'd invite them all, and they would all come. Her notable relations—the Van Horns and Van Corlears and Amsterdams and Hackensacks, and Heaven knows who else—would yawn and perhaps shudder when they got the tickets for her entertainment. They would mostly come, too, and all their grand friends would no doubt follow them. But they would come with a feeling of deadly rancor toward yourself; they would never forgive you for setting her up to it, and nothing could induce them to believe that you had not set her up to it." Here Goldwin crossed his legs with an impatient violence, and stared down at one of his shoes with enough intensity for it to have been concerned in the last caprice of the stock-market. "Oh, no," he went on, "that would never do. Never in the world. It wouldn't be a coup at all; it would be a monstrous fiasco. Take my advice, now, and politely but firmly nip any such proceeding in the bud."
Claire did. On his own side, Goldwin was secretly determined that she whom he thought the most fascinating, novel, and beautiful woman he had ever met, should achieve the full extent of her desires. These desires affected him much as they affected Hollister; they were part of Claire's charm for him; they were like the golden craft of scrollwork that framed the picture; they set it off, and made it more precious; there was a lovely imperiousness about them that would have bored him in another woman, like a kind of ugly greed, but that in her were a delight.
He had made up his mind to serve her, brilliantly, conspicuously, and he soon did so. He issued invitations for a dinner at Delmonico's, and gave it on a scale of splendor that eclipsed all his previous hospitalities. Rare music stole to the guests while they feasted; the board was literally pavilioned in flowers; the wines and the viands were marvels of rarity and cost; beside the plate of each lady lay a fan studded with her monogram in precious stones; during dessert a little cake was served to everybody present, which, when broken, contained a ring with the word bienvenu embossed in silver along its golden circlet. The host had very carefully chosen his guests from among the autocrats and arbiters of fashion. Claire and Hollister were the only persons who did not represent aristocracy at its sovereign height. But on Claire fell the chief honors. It was she whom Goldwin conducted into the dining room; it was she to whom he directed the major share of his attentions, contriving with slight apparent effort that she should know every one else, and making it evident that the affair was held in large luxurious compliment to herself alone, though not thrusting this fact into more than partial prominence.
Goldwin, for certain marked reasons of his own, had been from the first resolved upon the attendance of Mrs. Ridgeway Lee. He sent no invitation to Mrs. Van Horn. He knew that Claire suspected the latter of adverse feelings, and he knew no more than this. But Mrs. Van Horn was not a necessity to the success of his festival; she could easily be replaced by some other leader, and it would be much better not to invite her at all than to invite her without avail. But Mrs. Lee must appear.
He had been prepared for refusal, and it promptly came. On the evening of the day it reached him, he presented himself at Mrs. Lee's residence. He found her alone. She had denied herself to four or five other gentlemen during the previous hour. She had expected Goldwin, though she tried to look decorously surprised when he entered her elegant little drawing-room.
She had chosen to clothe herself in black satin, the shimmer of whose tense-drawn fabric about bust and waist, and of its trailing draperies about the lower portion of her lithe person, gave to her strange beauty an almost startling oddity. An irreverent critic who had recently seen her in this robe had declared that she made him think of a wet eel. Allowing the comparison to have been apt, if ungallant, there is no doubt that she could have suggested only an eel very much humanized, with a face of quite as extraordinary feminine beauty as that possessed by the deadly lady whom Keats so weirdly celebrated.
Her dark eyes seemed to-night lit with the smouldering fires of fever. The moment Goldwin looked well at her he made up his mind that he was to have a hard time of it. She had undoubtedly guessed the purport of his dinner, and she meant to tell him so. He strongly suspected that she meant to tell him so, as well, with considerable verbal embellishment.
He pretended, in a playful way, to be dazzled by her fantastic apparel. He put both hands up to his eyes and rubbed them in a comic imitation of bewilderment.