Stella seated herself at one end of the table which had been shortened to its smallest size and placed John at the other. Her position, the lights and the effects of the picture in his imagination, she had carefully planned and rehearsed before his arrival. She meant to win to-night.
Behind her stood the rich old mahogany sideboard of Colonial pattern, the Graham silver flashing in the quaint gold mirror which hung above it. In the mirror her own image was clearly reflected. The man opposite could look into her face and at the same time see in the shining silvery picture above the sideboard the black ringlets of curling hair at the back of her neck, as well as the exquisite lines of her figure.
John gazed at her in silent wonder. Never had he seen a picture so appealing in its beauty to every sense of his being. He felt that she was born to sit at that table amid such surroundings.
She lifted the teapot to fill his cup:
“This little feast is to celebrate the completion of our work.”
“And seal our friendship, may I hope?” he broke in with a smile.
“Yes,” she answered in a whisper.
These soft notes of her voice thrilled the man before her, and his whole being quivered in response to their call. He wondered if he could conceal the hunger with which he was looking into her eyes.
He had always thought her the most beautiful being he had ever seen, but to-night for the first time she had dressed specially to receive him, and his imagination had not dreamed the picture—Her beauty fairly stunned him.
Her dress was of filmy zephyr-like white chiffon, cut low to show the full lines of the neck and shoulders. Around the upper part of her beautiful bare arms, where they melted into the shoulders, was drawn a scarf of delicate lace. Where it crossed the waist line in V shape, was pinned an ivorytype miniature portrait of her proud mother, painted at her own age of twenty, which looked so strikingly like the living form above, it might have been taken for the image of a twin sister. A sash of pink ribbon encircled her figure. The skirt hung in full puffy lines draped over a number of under-skirts after the fashion of the period. The bottom of the skirt was finished with a border of lace on the top of which were set at intervals clusters of little pink roses wrought in silk.