So as Betty hesitated a moment, looking at the bright decorations, the space clear before her, she made a pretty picture.
Hearts were in evidence everywhere. A flying Cupid, with bow and arrow, was suspended by a wire in a corner prettily fitted up as a sort of shrine to St. Valentine. Flowers gave fragrance and the spacious rooms were at a comfortable temperature. Marcella had spared no pains to make a pretty setting for her party.
She, too, was to be unknown till the unmasking. Accordingly, her mother and father and a visiting grandmother received the young guests and stood just within the limits of the drawing-room proper.
“Look at that sweet valentine standing there, wife,” said Mr. Waite, just aware of Betty and adjusting his glasses. “Who is she?”
“As I cannot lift her mask, I can not tell you, Lawrence,” returned Mrs. Waite, “but you are right. She looks as if she had just stepped out of an old-fashioned valentine. How cleverly that little lacy head-dress, with the heart in the middle of it, is arranged above her powdered hair! Larry ought to see her! Where is he, anyway?”
Betty glanced up the stairs, to see if the other girls were coming, but just at that moment, while the Waites were making their comments and Betty paused, St. Valentine himself in the person of one of Marcella’s friends, bethought himself of the duties which he had assumed to announce the guests. He detached himself from a little group which he had joined and came hurrying toward Betty.
His performance varied from the usual procedure; for he took her hand with a deep bow and led her to Mrs. Waite as he announced loudly, “Miss Valentine, a member of my own family!”
So led, with her quaint skirt and flowered silk overdress, a cascade of little pink hearts draped across her breast, Betty, like a pink rose from some old garden, went to give her hand in greeting. Very much grown up looked Betty in this costume, as her mother had regretfully told her. “But I am grown up,” Betty had replied.
She spread her fan a little, to act her part, and spoke in the formal manner of a polite stranger, though now, living only a few squares away, she had been here often and knew both Mr. and Mrs. Waite. Marcella’s mother was “a dear,” and Mr. Waite, slight, active, grey-haired, keen, was interesting.
“As you must be one of Marcella’s friends,” said Mr. Waite, extending his hand, “I shall dare to say that any lad here might be glad to see a valentine like this one coming his way. Don’t you agree with me, Mother?”