“My aunt insisted while we were in London that I buy one or two coloured gowns. My father has been dead more than a year. I put this on to-night to please her, although I have two white evening gowns.”
She wore green taffeta flowing open in front over a white embroidered muslin slip, and trimmed with white fringe. A sash whose fringed ends hung down in front, girt her small waist. Her arms and neck were bare, but slipping from the shoulders, carelessly held in the fashion of the day, was a white crêpe scarf fringed with green. She wore her hair in the usual bunch of curls on either side of her face, but in a higher knot than usual, and had bound her head with the golden fillet Mrs. Nunn had pressed upon her in London. Depending from it and resting on her forehead, was an oblong emerald; Anne had a few family jewels although she wore no others to-night.
“I vow!” continued Miss Ogilvy, tripping about her, “quite classic! And at the same time such style! Such ton! Madame Lucille made that gown. Am I not right?”
Anne confessed that Madame Celeste had made it.
“Celeste, I meant. How could I be so stupid? But it is two long years since I laid eyes on Bond Street. A humbler person, plain Mrs. Barclay, sends out my gowns. What do you think, dear Miss Percy, shall I look provincial, second-rate, amongst all these lucky people of fashion?”
“You are lovely and your gown is quite perfect,” said Anne warmly, and then the two girls went down-stairs arm in arm, vowing eternal friendship. Miss Ogilvy professed a deep interest in the poet, declared that she had begged her obdurate papa time and again to call upon and reclaim him; and Anne, who now detested Lady Mary, was resolved to further her new friend’s interests with Lord Hunsdon. He joined them at the foot of the staircase and escorted them to a little inner balcony above the saloon. There was no danger of interference from Lady Mary, who was to perform, or from Lady Hunsdon, who occupied the chair of state in the front row.
They were late and looked down upon a brilliant scene. Not even a dowager wore black, and the young women, married and single, were in every hue, primary and intermediate. Almost as many wore their hair à la Victoria as in the more becoming curls, for loyalty, so long dead and forgotten, was become the rage since the young Queen had raised the corpse. But they softened the severity of the coiffure with wreaths, and feathers, and fillets, and even coquettish little lace laps, filled with flowers. The men were equally fine in modish coats and satin waistcoats; narrow and severe or deep and ruffled neckties but one degree removed from the stock, or in flowing collars à la Byron. Their hair was parted in the middle and puffed out at the side; not a few wore a flat band of whisker that looked like the strap of the condemned. Both Hunsdon and Warner shaved, or Anne would have tolerated neither.
There was a platform at the end of the saloon, with curtains at the back separating it from a small withdrawing-room, and it had been tastefully embellished with rugs, jars of gorgeous flowers, a reading stand, a harp and a piano.
“Who will sway over the harp?” asked Miss Ogilvy humorously.