"Nervous?" Claire softly echoed. "No, not at all, now. I've other more important things to think of. What could she do, after all? Let her attempt any folly; it would only recoil on herself.... Ah, my friend, I am afraid I'm past being injured. This is my finale. I want it to prove a grand one."
"It will, Claire. They have all come, as you see. They have met you with perfect cordiality, and you have received them with every bit of your accustomed grace. I dare say that some of them are stunned with amazement; they no doubt expected to find you shivering and colorless."
The repast was magnificent. There were more than thirty ladies present, and these, all brilliantly attired and some of striking personal beauty, made the prodigal array of flowers, the admirable service of many delicious viands, and the soft music pealing from the near hall just loudly enough not to drown conversation while it filled pauses, produce an effect where the most unrestrained hospitality was mingled with a faultless refinement.
Claire's spirits seemed to rise as the decorous yet lavish banquet proceeded. Her laugh now and then rang out clear and sweet, while she addressed this or that lady, at various distances from where she herself sat. Mrs. Diggs, whose place was next her own, observed it all with secret wonder. She alone knew the bleeding pride, the balked aspiration, the thwarted yearning, which this pathetic and fictitious buoyancy hid. It was a defiance, and yet how skilled and radiant a one! Could you blame the woman who knew how to bloom and sparkle like this, for loving the world where such dainty eminence was envied and prized? Was there not a touch of genius in her pitiable yet dauntless masquerade? Who else could have played the same part with the same deft security, and in the very teeth of failure and dethronement?
Claire's gayety and self-possession made more than one of her guests lose faith in the tale of her husband's ruin. They were all women of the world, and they all had the tact and breeding to perceive that their hostess, now if ever, merited their best courtesy. They could all have staid away at the last moment; Mrs. Van Horn held no exclusive claim to the possession of her headache; its right of appropriation belonged elsewhere. But they had not availed themselves of it; they had chosen to sit at Claire's board, to break her delicate bread. Hence they owed her their allegiance to-day, even if to-morrow they should find expediency in its harshest opposite. But it now appeared to them as if she were refuting the widespread rumor of her husband's misfortunes; her own equipoise and scintillance bespoke this no less than the irreproachable chic of the entertainment to which she had bidden them.
Mrs. Lee was not very far away from Claire, and yet the latter never addressed or seemed to notice her. But Mrs. Diggs noticed her; she indeed maintained a vigilant, though repressed, watchfulness.
"You have quieted her," she found a chance to murmur in Claire's ear, sure that the indefinite nature of the pronoun would not be misunderstood. "She is still looking excited and queer, but she has almost relapsed into silence. Perhaps she really wanted to poison you, and feels hurt at the lost opportunity." Mrs. Diggs had had several sips of good wine, and felt her anxiety lessened; her jocose ebullition was the result of steadied nerves. "I never saw you so spirituelle, Claire," she went on. "You have said at least eight delicious things. I have them all mentally booked, my dear. When we are next alone together I will remind you of them."
"Pray don't," Claire answered, putting the words into a still lower aside than her friend's. "I shall have hard enough work to forget, then. I shall want only to forget, too."
She had just finished this faint-spoken sentence when one of the servants handed her a note. As she glanced at its superscription the thought passed through her mind that it might be some dire and alarming message from her husband. But the next instant a flash of recollection assailed her. She remembered the handwriting—or, at least, in this festive and distracting environment, she more than half believed that she did so.
Her hands, while she swiftly tore open the envelope, were dropped upon her lap. She read several lines of a note, and then crushed it, quickly and covertly. As her eyes met those of Mrs. Diggs she had a sense that she was becoming ghastly pale.