CHAPTER XI
Miss Mirabelle Starkweather lifted up her cup of tea, and with the little finger of her right hand stiffly extended to Mr. Mix’s good health. Mr. Mix, sitting upright in a gilded chair which was three sizes too small for him, bowed with a courtliness which belonged to the same historical period as the chair, and also drank. Over the rim of his cup, his eyes met Mirabelle’s.
“Seems to me you’ve got on some kind of a new costume, haven’t you?” asked Mr. Mix gallantly. “Looks very festive to me––very.”
For the first time since bustles went out of fashion, Miss Starkweather blushed; and when she blushed, she was quite as uncompromising about it as she was about everything else. It wasn’t that she had a grain of romance in her, but that she was confused to be caught in the act of flagging a beau; to hide her confusion, she rose, and went over to the furthest window 197 and flung it wide open. The month was February, and the air was chill and raw, but Mirabelle could think of no other pretext for turning her back and cooling her cheeks. And yet, although she would have perjured herself a thousand times before she would admit it, she felt a certain strange, spring-like pleasure to know that Mr. Mix was only pretending to be deceived.
“Oh, my, no,” she said over her shoulder. “I’ve had this since the Flood.”
Mr. Mix had also risen, to hand her back to her seat, and now he stood looking down at her. She was wearing a gown of rustling, plum-coloured taffeta, with cut-steel buttons; and at her belt there was a Dutch silver châtelaine which had been ultra-smart when she had last worn it. Vaguely, she supposed that it was ultra-smart today, and that was the reason she had attached it to her. From the châtelaine depended a silver pencil, a gold watch, a vinaigrette with gold-enamelled top, and a silver-mesh change-purse. At her throat, she had a cameo, and on her left hand, an amethyst set in tiny pearls. Mr. Mix, finishing the inventory, seated himself and began 198 to tap one foot on the floor, reflectively. He was a man of perception, and he knew warpaint when he saw it.
“Makes you look so much younger,” said Mr. Mix, and sighed a little.
“Don’t be a fool,” said Miss Starkweather, and to dissemble her pleasure, she put an extra-sharp edge on her voice. “I don’t wear clothes to make me look younger; I wear ’em to cover me up.”
“That’s more than I can say for the present generation.”
“Ugh!” said Miss Starkweather. “Don’t speak of it! Shameless little trollops! But the worst comment you could make about this present day is that men like it. They like to see those disgraceful get-ups. They marry those girls. Beyond me.”