“Far from it. They will take the pattern of my frock with their eyes before I have been in the room ten minutes. Just watch them.”
“I will; if I can take my eyes off you.”
Juanita ran away to change her white peignoir for a walking-dress, and reappeared in half an hour radiant and ready for the drive.
“How do you like my frock?” she asked, posing herself in front of her husband, and challenging admiration.
The frock was old gold Indian silk, soft and dull, made with an exquisite simplicity of long flowing draperies, over a kilted petticoat which just showed the neat little tan shoes, and a glimpse of tan silk stocking. The bodice fitted the tall supple figure like a glove; the sleeves were loose and short, tied carelessly at the elbow with a broad satin ribbon, and the long suéde gloves matched the gown to the nicest shade. Her hat was leghorn, broad enough to shade her eyes from the sun, high enough to add to her importance, and caught up on one side with a bunch of dull yellow barley and a few cornflowers, whose vivid hue was repeated in a cluster of the same flowers embroidered on one side of the bodice. Her large sunshade was of the same silk as her gown, and that was also embroidered with cornflowers, a stray blossom flung here and there with an accidental air.
“My love, you look as if you had stepped out of a fashion book.”
“I suppose I am too smart,” said Juanita with an impatient sigh; “and yet my colouring is very subdued. There is only that touch of blue in the cornflowers—just the one high light in the picture. That is the only drawback to country life. Everything really pretty seems too smart for dusty roads and green lanes. One must be content to grope one’s obscure way in a tailor gown or a cotton frock all the year round. Now this would be perfection for a Wednesday in Hyde Park, wouldn’t it?”
“My darling, it is charming. Why should you not be prettily dressed under this blue summer sky? You can sport your tailor gowns in winter. You are not too smart for me, Nita. You are only too lovely. Bring your dust cloak, and you may defy the perils of the road.”
Celestine, Lady Carmichael’s French-Swiss maid, was in attendance with the dust cloak, an ample wrap of creamy silk and lace, cloudlike, indescribable. This muffled the pretty gown from top to toe, and Nita took her seat in the phaeton, and prepared for a longer drive and a longer talk than they had had yesterday.
She was pleased at the idea of showing off her handsome young husband and her new frock to those advanced young ladies, who had affected a kind of superiority on the ground of what she called “heavy reading,” and what they called advanced views. Janet and Sophia had accepted Lady Cheriton’s invitations with inward protest, and in their apprehension of being patronized had been somewhat inclined to give themselves airs, taking pains to impress upon their cousin that she was as empty-headed as she was beautiful, and that they stood upon an intellectual plane for which she had no scaling ladder. She had put up with such small snubbings in the sweetest way, knowing all the time that as the Honourable Juanita Dalbrook, of Cheriton Chase, and one of the débutantes whose praises had been sung in all the society papers, she inhabited a social plane as far beyond their reach as their intellectual plane might be above hers.