Gwynne, whose seat also commanded a view of the room, looked about him with much interest. He had a vague association of impropriety with the name of the restaurant, but he saw only a few painted females and queer-looking men. The majority looked as if they belonged to the higher walks of Bohemia, and quite a fourth were indubitably fashionable. But his more vivid impression was that they all looked gay and care-free, and that their personalities were not wholly obscured by clothes. After lunching or dining at one of the great New York restaurants he had carried away the impression of a tremendously fashionable school in uniform—the women distinguished in appearance beyond those of any other American city, but utterly unindividual. The social bodies of the United States had interested him little, but to-night he glanced about with something of the curiosity of a Columbus discovering the land of his fathers. No doubt his Otis great-grandfather had been intimate with the great-grandfathers of more than one man present; in this remote bit of civilization he almost felt as if he were sitting down with a company of relatives, at the least to a gathering of the clans. And he had rarely seen so many handsome women together, nor such a variety of types.
Paula, who knew every one by sight and assiduously read the society papers, volunteered much information while Isabel ordered the dinner; Stone had been detained half-way down the room by a party of friends.
"That is Mrs. Masten," she whispered, with a respectful accent on the name and in the significant tone she always employed when addressing a person of social importance. "The youngish tall woman with white hair and distinguished profile. She is one of the old set—the one Mrs. Belmont belonged to—and fearfully haughty. Some people call her a beauty, but how can a woman be a beauty with white hair? Lots get it here and lose their complexions before they are twenty-five. It is the wind and nerves and too many good times. I wonder I have not gone off too, but I take a nap every day no matter what happens. Just beyond is Mrs. Trennahan. She never did have any beauty with that sallow skin and no feature except her eyes; but her husband, who was a great swell in New York, and often takes her there, is quite devoted to her, and they have a house on Nob Hill and another in Menlo Park. She is so exclusive that it is a wonder she ever condescends to dine in a restaurant; but Mr. Trennahan is a fearfully high liver, and this kitchen is famous. Mrs. Trennahan's mother, Mrs. Yorba, who led society in the Eighties, had only ninety people on her visiting list, and they say that her parties were the dullest ever given in San Francisco. Of course that was before I was born. The glory of that prehistoric crowd has departed, in spite of the fact that a few of them—not many—have kept their fortunes—and they are nothing to the new ones. The Irish and Germans are on top now and are just ruling things—people whose very names our mothers never heard, although they were making their piles without saying much about it. They have come forward in the last five or six years with a rush. All the old leaders are dead, and their children don't seem to care much—just stand aside and put on airs. One of the new leaders has a brogue. And as for Mrs. Hofer—take a good look at her."
Paula indicated a tall superbly proportioned young woman in a simple Parisian black gown and an immense black hat with a cascade of white feathers rolling over the brim; she had a round laughing face and an air of indescribable buoyancy. "She was born and brought up south of Market Street, in the respectable part, but a dead give away in her generation: she's only twenty-six. I forget what her old peasant grandfather started life as, a peddler, probably, but afterwards he had a dry-goods store, or shoes or something, and he bought real estate, and his son improved it, so now they are rich. She was educated at the public schools, went to the University for a year, had two more in Europe, and came back with what they call presence and style, but is just cheek dressed up. She hadn't much show socially, but she didn't lose any time capturing Nicolas Hofer, the son of a German emigrant, who made money in the commission business which his sons have turned into millions. All the men like him, and as he was a great catch, of course he went everywhere; and when he married they had to accept his wife. She did the rest, and no one can deny that she is smart—in our sense and yours! She is a leader already, and has a perfectly wonderful house, that all the old aristocrats fall over themselves to get invited to. I'd like to go there myself, but of course I'm nobody. Hofer poses as a reformer, but I guess this old town's too much for him—"
"Nicolas Hofer?" asked Gwynne, with interest. "I fancy that is the man my mother met at Homburg and asked me to call on."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Paula, with a toss of her head. "If you are going in for fine society you will soon have no use for us."
Gwynne, being unaccustomed to crudities of this sort, applied himself to his oysters, while Isabel made a fierce resolution that she would find another chaperon or remain in the country. She was disagreeably conscious of craning necks, and although she knew that she was beginning to excite interest in San Francisco, and was looking her best in a white cloth frock and large white hat, she made no doubt that her juxtaposition to the exotic Paula was the theme of more than one unpleasant comment. While she liked Bohemia and was entirely indifferent to shabbiness, she had never grown accustomed to vulgarities, and that they should be embodied in her adopted sister filled her with a futile wrath.
Stone hurried to his neglected party, waving his hand genially. He was a very tall loosely built man, with a sensuous laughing mouth and an eye that was seldom sober. He carried wine in his spirit as well as in his skin, and if the latter had bagged a trifle under its burden, the spirit was only depressed by the morning headache, and few men were more popular.
"Know what kept me?" he demanded, as he doubled a huge Eastern oyster—for the others Isabel had ordered the more delicate Californian, but Stone's interior demanded a sterner nourishment. "Isabel, you are famous. At first it was the men. Now it is the women too. It was like you, dearie, to put Isabel opposite that mirror where everybody can see her, but in which she looks just one decree further removed from common mortals. Takes an artist's wife! No use, my sister. The Eggopolis must take care of itself, the chickens be left to roost alone. San Francisco wants you, and what she wants she gets—what is the matter, darling?" The corners of his little wife's mouth were down and her chin was trembling.
"You might have paid me one compliment!" she enunciated, between anger and tears.