Kate shivered. She looked around for a way of escape from this murmuring, croaking person whom but a minute ago she had dubbed stately and lovely. If she should start now and dance off on the music that was beginning again might she outdance the spectre? Might she overtake the glamour? There was Elsie, standing alone for the minute in the open doorway a few steps away. Kate knew now why she had outdistanced Elsie in popularity to-night; she knew it as she watched her, hardly aware of thinking about it at all. Elsie was too fine, too entirely lovely in the real meaning of the word to appeal to any but those sensitive to loveliness in its purest essence. She did not belong to the party at all. She belonged to the starlight beyond the lamplight, to the dim orchard—to the orchard house!
“Whom will you dance this with?” the dowager was inquiring in Kate’s ear.
“The first person that gets here,” Kate replied, quickly. But the dowager did not take offence. Several were in the race, but a tall, lanky youth won, a humorous creature with a happy-go-lucky bearing. When Kate rose to dance off with him, the dowager took her hand. She smiled up at her in the most friendly manner. “You must come to call on me soon,” she said. “Or I will call for you and take you for a drive and then home for tea. That will be better, I think. How is that?”
“Thank you.” Kate managed to smile, but it was a smile her mother would never have recognized.
“I’ll say,” her partner informed her the minute they were out of hearing, “you’ve made a hit. Do you know who she is? Jack Denton’s grandmother, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith. The social autocrat of Oakdale. Everything will come your way now.”
But Kate did not respond to this gay assurance. “What’s the matter?” her partner asked, surprised. Responsiveness had been Kate’s greatest charm all the evening, if she had only known it, not the cap.
“Nothing. Only I’m chilly.”
The boy whistled. “No wonder, having sat next to that old iceberg so long. Though ’twas probably the air from the door, too. It’s lots cooler and a storm is coming up, I think. I’d have rescued you sooner if I’d had the nerve. She looked almost outlandishly amiable, though. What was her line?”
Kate shivered, a pretend shiver this time, getting her gaiety back. “Blood! Just blood, if you will believe me. Is she an ogress as well as a social autocrat? She discussed blood in several of its phases. Bad blood, good blood, and talking blood. Like the singing bone, I suppose.”
The boy laughed heartily. “She didn’t waste any time in mounting her hobby, I’ll say. But she can’t worry you. Your blood’s all right. That’s the word’s been going ’round ever since the invitations were out. ‘Fraziers, one of the best families in Massachusetts.’ She was probably congratulating you and expecting a return of the compliment.”