At sight of it Mrs. Austen experienced the admiration tinctured with the vitriol of jealousy that some mothers inject. Mrs. Austen had been a belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl, who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs. Austen was blind to it. It was her daughter's physical beauty that she always saw and which, though she was jealous of it, had, she knew, a value, precisely as beauty had a value in Circassia where, before the war, it fetched as much as a hundred Turkish pounds. In New York, where amateurs are keener and beauty is more rare, it may run into millions.
Commercially conscious of that, Mrs. Austen felt for the cards and carelessly produced one.
"Do you know, I believe we are to have a shower. Your young man got off just in time."
Margaret, who had glanced at the prostrate nymph, looked at her upright mother. "Do you mean that Keith has come—and gone?"
Mrs. Austen sat down and extracted another card. "My dear, when I went below he was coming in. We——"
Margaret, with her usual directness, interrupted. "But he is coming back?"
"That depends on you."
"On me? How? What do you mean?"
"That you must do as you like, of course. But if you elect to see him, for goodness' sake don't refer to it."
"Refer to it!" Margaret exclaimed. "Refer to what?"