Watching that quadrille through her drooping emerald-tinted eyes, she had received a sudden enlightening impression of Shirley’s flawless beauty. At the tournament her fleeting glimpse had adjudged the other merely sweetly pretty. The Chalmers’ surrey had stopped en route for Shirley, but in her wraps and veil she had then been all but invisible. This had been Katharine’s first adequate view, and the sight of her radiant charm had the effect almost of a blow.
For Katharine, be it said, had wholly surrendered to the old, yet new, attraction that had swept her on the tourney field. This feeling was no less cerebral and intellectual than it had been: she was no Galatea waiting her Pygmalion. But it was strong for all that. And what had lain always in the back of her mind as a half-formed intention, had become a self-admitted purpose during the motor ride. So as she watched them in the waltz, seasoned artificialist as she was, Katharine for a breath had had need of all her address to keep the ball of conversation sparklingly a-roll. Her natural assurance, however, came quickly to her aid. She had been an acknowledged beauty too many seasons—had known John Valiant, or believed she had, too long and too well—to allow the swift keen edge of trepidation that had touched her to cool into prescience.
In another moment the waltz fainted out, to be succeeded by a deux-temps, and presently the host, in his crimson cloak, was doffing his plumed hat before her. Circling the polished floor in the maze, there was something gratefully like former days in the assured touch, the true and ready guidance. The intrusive question faded. He was the John Valiant she had always known, of flashing repartee and graceful compliment, yet with a touch of dignity, too—as befitted the lord of a manor—which sat well upon him. After a decorous dozen of rounds, she took his arm and allowed her perfect figure to be conducted through the various rooms of the ground floor, chatting in quite the old-time way, till a new gallant claimed her.
The mellow strings made on their merry tune, and at length the Washington Post marched all in flushed unity of purpose to the great muslin-walled porch with its array of tables groaning under viands concocted by Aunt Daphne for the delectation of the palate-weary: layer-cakes, furry-brown with chocolate, or saffron with orange icing; fruit-cake richer than an Indian begum; angel-cake as white (as the major was to remark) as innocence and almost as sweet as the lady upon whom he pressed it at the moment; yellow jumbles, kisses that crumbled at a touch, and all nameless toothsome inventions for which new-laid eggs are beaten and golden citron sliced.
And then once more the waltz-strain supervened and in the yellow parlor joy was again unconfined. Among the masculine contingent, perhaps, the same catholicity of age no longer prevailed, certain of the elders showing an inclination toward one end of the front porch, now hazing with the fragrance of Havanas. But the dowagers’ fans plied on, the rose-corners echoed their light laughter and the couples footed it as though midnight was yet unreached and dawn as far afield as Judgment Day.
Again Valiant claimed Katharine and they glided off on The Beautiful Blue Danube. Her paleness now had a tinge of color but nevertheless he thought she drooped. “You are tired,” he said, “shan’t we sit it out?”
“Oh, do you mind?” she responded gratefully. “It has been a fairly strenuous day, hasn’t it!”
He guided her to a corridor, where branches of rhododendron screened an alcove of settees and seductive cushions. Here, her weariness seemed put to rout. There was no drooping of fringed lids, no disconcerting silences; she chatted with ease and piquancy.
“It’s like a fairy tale,” she said at length dreamily,—“this wonderful life. To step into it from New York is like coming out of a hot-house into the spring out-of-doors! It makes our city existence seem so sordidly artificial. You have chosen right.”
“I know it. And yet two months ago a life a hundred miles from the avenue would have seemed a sad and sandy Sahara. I know better now.”