“Yours is gorgeous, Sylvia,” the younger girl returned. “I noticed to-night that it is so black that it actually made David’s dinner coat look gray when you stood beside him.”
“I like my black wig,” Sylvia returned, contentedly, “because it’s—Fleming. I don’t think I should feel quite right with anything but the family hair! But when all’s said and done this colour of yours is the hair of the poets, Gay.”
She said it charmingly, and she meant it, too. For like many women of unchallenged beauty, Sylvia was very simple and unselfconscious about her appearance, and seemed to take no more personal credit for the milk-white skin, rose cheeks, and midnight hair than for her perfect digestion or the possession of her senses.
“You’re the one who looks like Uncle Roger, Sylvia!”
“In colouring, perhaps. How much do you remember him, Gay?”
“Oh, clearly. I was nearly seven when he died, you know.”
“I really loved him,” Sylvia said, dreamily. “And I hope I can keep up all the old traditions and customs he loved so here at Wastewater. I inherit a love for him,” she added, with a significant look and smile. “There’s no question that my mother loved him dearly for years. Oh, she loved my father, too, later on, and perhaps in a finer way,” went on Sylvia, who could fit such meaningless phrases together with all the suavity of college-bred twenty. “But her first love was for Uncle Roger.”
“Do you think he——?” Gay began, and paused.
“He——? Go on, Gay. Do you mean did he break the engagement? No,” Sylvia stated, definitely. “I imagine he did not. He was a gentleman, after all! But probably there was a quarrel—Mamma was much admired and a beauty—and she’s a perfect Lucifer for pride, you know, and neither one would give way.”
Gay accepted this with all the pathetic faith of her years. She could not possibly imagine Aunt Flora as a beauty; but every middle-aged woman who talked of her own youth had been one, and Gay was perfectly willing to believe the last a beautiful generation. She thought of a picture she had seen of Aunt Flora as a bride, in a plumed hat, enormous puffed sleeves, a five-gored skirt sweeping the ground, a wasp-waist with a chatelaine bag dangling from the belt, and a long-handle parasol held out like Bo-Peep’s crook, and lost the thread of Sylvia’s conversation.