"No," said Claire. "It is a very delightful place, is it not?"
"Well, yes," returned the lady, with a covert dissent in her admission. "It's nice, but it's awfully stiff."
"Do you mean ceremonious?" asked Claire.
"Yes. I got frightfully tired of it. I always do. My husband likes it, and so I go on his account. I'd much rather go to Narragansett or Mount Desert. They're more like real country, don't you know? You haven't got to button your gloves all the time, and pose your parasol. You're not bothered with thinking whom you shall know and whom you shan't. You can let yourself loose. I love to let myself loose. But you can't do it in Newport. Everybody there is on a kind of high horse. Now I like to come down, once in a while, and ride a pony."
The lady gave a shrill, short laugh as she ended these words. Claire had already noted all her personal details. She was tall of figure and extremely slender. She had a sharp-cut face which would have gained by not being of so chill a pallor. Her black eyes were full of restless brilliancy; her lips were thin, and marked at their rims by a narrow bluish line. She carried herself with an air of importance, but her manner was very far from the least supercilious display. She promptly impressed you as a woman whose general definition was a democratic one, though aristocracy might also be among her minor meanings. She had no claims to beauty; she was too meagre in point of flesh, too severe in general contour, too acute in her angles. She lacked all the charm of feminine curves; she was a living conspiracy of straight lines. You could not closely observe her without remarking the saliency of her joints; she seemed put together on a plan of cruel keenness. At the same time, her motions were not awkward; she managed her rectilinear body with a surprising ease and pliancy. Her health appeared excellent, notwithstanding her slim frame and chalky color. The warmth, speed, and geniality of her speech, evidently springing from high animal spirits, no doubt enforced this inference.
Claire felt not a little puzzled by her, and had an immediate wish to find out just who she was. On the afternoon of yesterday she had once or twice joined the patrician group and had chatted with this or that member of it, apparently on the most familiar terms. Claire already knew, having thus observed her, that she was a recent arrival. But past experiences made it seem quite probable that she was merely a tolerated nobody. 'Would she join me like this and address me so affably,' Claire asked herself, 'if she were some one of real note?'
At the same time, any trace of such self-depreciation was far enough from showing itself in Claire's spoken answer.
"Everything is tiresome, I suppose," she said, "if there is too great a supply of it. For my own part, I think that I like the conventionalities, as they are called. I haven't seen enough of them in my life to be wearied by them. I have known what poverty is in other years, and now, when I contrast it with the little ceremonies and forms that accompany prosperity, I find myself rather glad that these exist."
Her companion looked surprised for a moment. She put her thin face rather close to Claire's. The candor of the latter was a novelty. Claire had used it with a somewhat subtle intent. Her fleet tact had told her that it was best frankly to count herself outside of the social pale behind which she more than suspected that this garrulous matron belonged.
"Oh, so you've been poor?" came the somewhat rattling response. "But of course you're not so now, or you wouldn't speak of it. Poverty must be so perfectly awful. I mean when one is born different from the people who ... well, don't you know, the people who are in tenement-houses, and all that." The speaker here paused, while arranging the long mousquetaire gloves that reached in tawny wrinkles far up either sharp arm. "Well," she suddenly recommenced, "I dare say I ought to care more for style and form and fashion. I was brought up right in the midst of it. All my relations are perfectly devoted to it. They look on me as a kind of black sheep, don't you know? They say I'm always going into the highways and hedges to pick up my friends. But I don't mind them; I laugh at them. They're here now in full force. There are two of the Hackensacks, and two of the Van Corlears, and two of the Van Kortlandts—all cousins of mine, more or less removed. I was a Van Kortlandt before I married. I'm Mrs. Manhattan Diggs, now, and I have been for five years. The best of the joke is that my husband, whom I perfectly dote on, by the way, and who's the dearest in all Christendom, disapproves of me as much as my relations do. The other day he called me a Red Republican, because I said society in New York was all trash. So it is trash. It's money, money, and nothing else. When he makes me dreadfully mad I throw his name at him. Diggs, you know. Isn't it frightful? His mother was a Manhattan—one of the real old stock, and she married a man by that name—an Englishman with a fortune. If he hadn't been rich I'd have pitied my poor husband. He'd never have made a dollar. I tell him that all he can do is to sit in the club-window, and drive, and bet, and play cards. But he's just as lovely to me as he can be, so I don't mind. I worship him, and he worships me, so we get on splendidly together, of course.... And now I've told you my name, you must tell me yours. I hope it's prettier than mine. It ought to be, you're so immensely pretty yourself."