When John comes back to the little room with the ice, Mamie who sent him for it has gone, and Gracie Holyoke and Derwent too. So he sate him down, disconsolate, amid the bed of orchids, screened by quite a jungle of banana palms; so poor, so clumsy a pretence of happiness did all this seem to him! The strains of the shallow music came to him from the distant ball-room; it was the waltz-tune that was the rage that winter,—
“Oh, lo-ove for a week—(tum, tum; rum, tim, tum!)
“A year, a day, (tum tum; rum, tum, tum!)
“But alas for the lo-ove that bi-i-deth alway! (tum, tum; rum, tim, tum!)”
John tried to deafen his ears to the music, which went on despite him, like the pettiness of life. He had had but one full look at Gracie Holyoke that night; and that had told him nothing.
A stifling hot-house scent was in the little room, and John had started up to leave it when there was a rustling in the doorway and Kitty Farnum stood before him alone.
She had been selected to take part in the spectacle of the evening, the much-envied fancy-dress minuet, after supper, that was to open the cotillon; and she wore the rich red brocades of a Louis Quinze court-dress, her dense hair powdered white, and from this mass of blazing color rose haughtily the regal neck and head, and the proud shoulders, and beneath the white masses of her hair her eyes burned deeply, like two violet stars. A sort of hush of admiration had attended her wherever she went that evening; and Haviland had heard men call her the beauty of the ball.
Miss Farnum stood silent for a moment, playing with a scarlet orchid that was most conspicuous of all among them; a noble figure, the very picture of a duchess; and Haviland, who had risen at her entrance, facing her more humbly, and yet like a gentleman, too.
“Mr. Haviland—my life must be settled to-night, one way or another: I am weary of it. You once were kind enough to take some interest in me—am I right in supposing that I had a friend in you?”
“Yes,” said John. There was an infinite respect and pity in his tone; he fancied that he knew what had happened.