Moods have a protean way of changing from roseate hues to grayness. Even the sustaining glory of Cousin Anna's dress seemed threatened, for as the maid removed the striped scarf, it appeared according to the cheval glass, that the radiance of spirit which earlier had appropriated the gown to its wearer, had flickered and expired, leaving the one Cousin Anna's, and the other, Selina Wistar, frightened and ill at ease and unforgivably young.
She moved with the company out into the hall and down the stairs. The walls were white and gold, paneled, and the stair covering was crimson; there were niches on the landing and again down the further flight of the stairs, from which looked busts of, so far as Selina knew, male Tuttles in white marble. It was august and costly and subduing, and though she had yet to live to be told it, Victorian and lamentable.
The parlors as seen through the arched entrances as she came reluctantly down the steps, were spacious, with crimson carpets of a piece with that in the halls, pier glasses, crimson curtains and gilt cornices, marble mantels outvying the niched busts for whiteness, prism chandeliers and gilt chairs in rows for the approaching musicale.
Mrs. Tuttle was stationed in the first parlor and by custom or arrangement or understanding everything fell away from her as it were, or so it seemed to Selina as she made her way in, the guests as they were presented retreating into the background of the far parlor.
A young man of such distinguished and easy appearance as to suggest new standards for judgment of Tommy and Bliss and Brent and the rest, handed the guests on to the person of the hostess. He proved to be Mr. Tuttle Jones, a nephew of the lady's deceased husband. Selina having in time thus reached Mrs. Tuttle, raised her eyes.
In the full enjoyment of her large person's sartorial splendor stood this lady, satin puffs in a high-light salmon, obtruding through slashes in a crimson satin waist and sleeves, from the open throat of which arose something akin to a Medici collar, the skirt flowing away in plenitude and a beaded headdress of a seemingly fish-net texture, completing the whole.
And in the pier glass just behind Mrs. Tuttle, and repeated again and again and yet and yet again from a confronting pier glass at the far end of the adjoining parlor, appeared a half dozen, a dozen, a hundred, was it a thousand reflected Selinas in myrtle and high-light greens, puffs, slashes, and netted headdress, vanishing into perspective? And multitudes upon multitudes grouped about the back parlor, or so it seemed to Selina, looking on.
So, it was the person of that young niece of Ann Eliza Wistar's that Mrs. Tuttle was gazing on? This lady never was known not to speak her mind.
"If Vincent made that dress for you, Selina, she's a fool."
The mirrors repeated the accusation, but they repeated the salmon and crimson person of Mrs. Tuttle, too. She was not one to spare herself at all.