And they pushed James Starbuck roughly, but with hands still friendly, out into the winter’s night.
But it is after eleven o’clock; and now we must hurry, if we would be in time for the ball.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE DUVAL BALL, CONCLUDED.
THE carriage had been in waiting some half an hour; the coachman, who could not leave his horses, was swearing upon the box, while the footman sought the shelter of the area door; the deep snow which had begun the afternoon still lay heaped in chance places, while the rain, descending in straight lines, made scattered pools of slush and water, visible when they happened to reflect the wet shining of the corner lamp-post, at other times a perilous pit for horses’ steps and men’s.
But Flossie sat still in the rose light of her own and inmost room: her husband was away, and her quilted sortie de bal lay ready on the lounge beside her. Not softer it than her white shoulders; and even in the face their owner looked marvellously young for her age.
She rose and drew the satin cloak around her; it was of the very faintest, palest, wood-bud green, making strange harmony with her ashen hair; and she walked to the window and looked out into the inhospitable night. Then—and without the final glance at the mirror that all women are said to give—she rang the bell, and followed by her maid went down the stairs alone. The indoor servants, with huge umbrellas, helped her to the carriage—so silly was it, as Flossie had always told her husband, for the house to have no porte-cochère—and the carriage lurched off, through the heaps of yet white snow, careening and sinking in the pools of rain.
But Mrs. Gower’s company is dull to-night; we may leave the ball with her, but we will not go. Her eyes are jaded with such sights; let us escort some brighter ones, and gayer spirits, and hearts more fresh to all impression. Such an one was Mamie’s; and prettily encased it was, in her glove-like waist that seemed without a wrinkle and made of whitest kid, over which her shoulders peeped more snowy, and from which streamed a frothy train of rippling—illusion, do they call it? Gracie had been down some time, with the old people, when she rippled like the springtime, down the stairs, with her arch eyes dancing and her cheeks encarnadine. Gracie’s beauty, to be sure, was greater still; only somehow, you did not look at it at first; it was but part of her, like the sky of some fair country.
Mr. and Mrs. Livingstone looked down on Mamie, though, with the happy pride of being parents to such a poem; they were much too old to go to balls, and so some married cousin had been found to matronize them. Miss Brevier alone noted Mamie’s heightened color and evident excitement; but thought it due to her first ball alone; and the old people kissed her and complimented her, and gave her obsolete advice, and sent her off so proudly—to the choice, as some might say, of two adventurers.