The evening had rather gone to Kate’s head. But the dowager person liked it. She liked it very much. She tapped Kate’s shoulder with her jewelled lorgnette. “Well, then, shall I say,” she continued quite in Kate’s fantastic mood, “you have your mother’s prettiness to begin with, and on top of that the magic cap has added a good bit more. But even better than prettiness you have her spirit. She was always the belle of every party. And often I’ve sat right here in this very chair and watched her gliding past with the young men. Dancers did glide then, not hop and walk. In spite of her preoccupation she always gave me a smile as she drifted. And I was old and ugly even then.”
“Old and ugly! Are you wearing a magic something yourself to-night, then? Perhaps it’s your pearls that make you seem stately and lovely!”
There was blarney in this, for while the dowager was stately enough she certainly was not lovely in any usual sense of the word.
But Kate was scarcely responsible. She hardly knew what she was saying; she was simply effervescing with high spirits and a heady self-satisfaction.
The dowager laughed mellowly. She was not often mellow, and certainly she had not been mellow before this evening. She had sat perfectly still in her chair, her hands folded, with the expression of a judge in court. Now, however, she was a judge no longer. She had slipped into the spirit of the party, swept in on Kate’s fantasy. Miss Frazier watching, but not appearing to watch, from a distant divan where she conversed with two or three mothers, saw the mellowing even at that distance and was well pleased. “Congratulations, Kate,” she said, mentally. “Congratulations, and thank you.”
Meanwhile the dowager was murmuring in Kate’s ear: “You are a dear! It’s for your mother’s and your grandfather’s sake I came to-night and persuaded my daughter to let the young people come. And now I am glad I did.”
Kate looked up at her. “Why for their sake? Why not come, anyway?” But as she spoke automatically, Kate felt her lips stiffening over the words. Indignation was suddenly welling up as it had in the garden with Jack Denton that morning. Glamour fled away, and Kate was straightening like a warrior.
But the dowager hardly heard her question, and certainly did not notice the straightening process. She went on, “I always said no good would come of it. There’s something in good blood that tells—and in bad blood, too. Not that we knew the blood was bad—although in time it showed it was surely enough—just that we didn’t know anything about it! How Miss Frazier dared, a person of her race and blood——”
But Kate interrupted with a strained laugh. “Blood!” she wanted to exclaim. “You make me creep. Are you Lady Macbeth’s grandmother?” But she uttered no sound except the laugh. This was fortunate for Kate, and remarkable restraint. She sat with lips stiffened, watching the glamour gliding away out of her heart, out of the party.
The dowager had paused a minute at Kate’s laugh, waiting for her to speak. But now she continued, “Terrible risk. Everyone warned her. But she would listen to nobody, not even to me. Now she’s trying to unmake her bed. It’s to be hoped she sees the folly of expecting anything good to be made out of bad blood. Environment! Pshaw! Futile!”