In a moment. For no jeweller of Amsterdam ever had an eye for the quality of diamonds surer than the eye of Frances Rhett for the quality of other women’s beauty. At the first glance to-night, she saw what others saw, though more clearly than they, that it was the touch of the past that gave Phyl her cachet, a something indefinable from yesterday, the lack of which made the other girls, by contrast, seem cheap.
Never could she have imagined that the “red-headed girl at Vernons” could gain so much from setting, a setting due to the instinct as well as the taste of “that old Maria Pinckney.”
She had always laughed at Maria, as young people sometimes will at the old.
When Richard came up to her a little later on, he found himself coldly received; she had no dances for him except a few at the bottom of the programme.
“You shouldn’t have been late,” said she.
“Well,” he said, “it was not my fault. You know what Aunt Maria is, she kept us ten minutes after the carriage was round, and then Phyl wasn’t ready.”
“She looks ready enough now,” said the other, looking at Phyl and the cluster of young men around her. “What delayed her? Was she dyeing her head? It doesn’t look quite so loud as when I saw her last.”
“Her head’s all right,” replied Pinckney, irritated by the manner of the other, “inside and out, and one can’t say the same for every one.”
Frances looked at him.
“Do you know what Silas Grangerson asked me to-night?” she said.