“Don’t you think your dress muffles your figure a little too much, Follingsbee?”—[page 94].
“I hope you don’t resent my criticisms, Follingsbee; you’ve picked me to pieces often enough. Or are you still vexed because I won’t fall in love with your favorite Alan? There, now,”—as Stanhope, grown desperate, seems about to speak,—“I know just what you want to say, and you need not say it. Follingsbee,” lowering her voice to a more confidential tone, “if I ever had a scrap of a notion of that sort, I have been cured of it since I came into this house to live. Oh! I know he’s your prime favorite, but you can’t tell me anything about Alan; I’ve got him all catalogued on my ten fingers. Here he is pro and con; pro’s your idea of him, you know. You say he is rich. Well, that’s something in these days! He’s handsome. Bah! a man has no business with beauty; it’s woman’s special prerogative. He came of a splendid blue-blooded family. Fudge! American aristocracy is American rubbish. He’s talented. Well, that’s only an accident for which he deserves no credit. He’s thoroughly upright and honorable. Well, he’s too bolt upright for me.”
“So,” murmurs Stanhope to his inner consciousness, “I am making a point in personal history, but—it’s a tight place for me!” And as Winnie’s arms give him a little hug, while she pauses to take breath, he feels tempted to retort in kind.
“Now, then,” resumes Winnie, absorbed in her topic; and releasing her victim to check off her “cons” on the pretty right hand; “here’s my opinion of Mr. Warburton. He’s proud, ridiculously proud. He worships his name, if not himself. He is suspicious, uncharitable, unforgiving. He’s hard-hearted. If Leslie were not an angel she would hate him utterly. He treats her with a lofty politeness, a polished indifference, impossible to resent and horrible to endure,—and all because he chooses to believe that she has tarnished the great Warburton name, by taking it for love of the Warburton fortune instead of the race.”
Up from the ball-room floats the first strains of a delicious waltz. Winnie stops, starts, and turns toward the door.
“That’s my favorite waltz, and I’m engaged to Charlie Furbish—he dances like an angel. Follingsbee, bye, bye!”
She flits to the mirror, gives two or three dainty touches to her coquettish costume, tosses a kiss from her finger tips, and is gone.
“Thank Heaven,” mutters Stanhope. “I consider that the narrowest escape of my life! What a little witch it is, and pretty, I’ll wager.”