Claire determined to address her. She waited the chance, and carried out her project. Mrs. Arcularius was just rising, with two or three other ladies, for the purpose of going inside to luncheon, when Claire decided to make the approach.
She looked very charming as she did so. Hollister had brought her a bunch of roses the evening before, and she had kept them fresh with good care until now. They were fixed, at present, in the bosom of her simple white muslin dress, and they became her perfectly. She went quite close to Mrs. Arcularius, and boldly held out her hand.
"I am very glad to meet you again," she said, "and I hope you have not forgotten me."
Mrs. Arcularius took her hand. Under the circumstances she could not have done otherwise without committing a harsh rudeness. And she was a woman whose rudenesses were never harsh.
With her disengaged hand she put up a pair of gold eye-glasses. "Oh, yes, surely yes," she said, while softly dropping Claire's hand; "you were one of my pupils?"
Claire did not like this at all. But she would not have shown a trace of chagrin, just then, for a heavy reward. She smiled, knowing how sweet her smile was, and promptly answered:
"I'm sorry that you only remember me as one of your pupils. I should like you to remember my name also. Are you quite certain that it has escaped you? Does not my face recall it?"
"Your face is a very pretty one, my dear," said Mrs. Arcularius. She looked, while speaking, toward her recent companions, who were moving away, with light touches of their disarranged draperies and sidelong glances at Claire. Her tones were impenetrably civil, but her wandering eye, and the slight averted turn of her large frame, made their civility bear the value, no less, of an impromptu veneer.
Claire divined all this, with rapid insight. Her wit began to work, in a sudden defensive way. She preserved her smile, looking straight at Mrs. Arcularius while she said, in a voice pitched so that the other ladies must of necessity hear it:
"I was so obscure a little girl among all the grand little girls who went to your school in my time, that I don't at all blame you for finding it inconvenient to recall me. I fear I have been mistaken in addressing you as the woman of business, my dear madam, when you find the great lady alone to your humor. But you have played both parts with so much success that perhaps you will pardon me for alluding to one at the expense of the other."