"A clever anecdote—considering it is impromptu!" said wilful Jessie, with an air of superb disbelief. "If I could credit it, and you—"
"You would cease to commiserate heiresses!" finished Wyllys. "For myself, I have an antipathy to the whole class. All whom I have had the misery of knowing were sordid, self-conceited, and rapacious of admiration to a degree that passed understanding and disgust."
He dropped his voice, for the crowd immediately about them had grown still and attentive.
Miss Sanford was going to sing. Jessie and her escort chanced to be near the piano, and had a fine view of her as she was led to the instrument by an ambitious senior, whom she loaded down with her bouquet, gloves, fan, handkerchief, and gold vinaigrette. She was probably about twenty-five years of age, but this was a difficult point to determine from her appearance; her hair, eyebrows, and complexion being so light, that, as Jessie afterwards said to Mrs. Baxter, she looked as if she might have lain for forty-eight hours in a bath of caustic soda and water—the preliminary process in the preparation of the phantom bouquets the President's lady was skilled in arranging. Miss Sanford was thin and bony. "Scraggy," one would have termed her, had she belonged to the so-called inferior animals. Her eyes were a pale, fixed blue, like those of a china doll; her lips met scantily over teeth that were unpleasantly prominent; she had a receding chin, a sharp nose, and a low forehead. A homely, shrewish-looking girl to the uninstructed eye. Yet her air showed that she was accustomed to receive court from the sophisticated multitude, the many who were awake to the fact that she was the undoubted mistress of charms not to be adequately expressed by less than seven figures. Her dress was a walking advertisement of her pretensions to this intelligent homage, being mauve satin, flounced with point lace. It was cut too low upon the flat chest and prominent shoulder-blades, but the region thus left bare was made interesting to feminine eyes by a magnificent diamond necklace. Bracelets to match loaded her meagre wrists, and were pushed up ostentatiously before she put her fingers upon the key-board, with a coquettish grimace at her cavalier.
"I don't sing ballads," Jessie and Orrin heard her say, tossing her head one-sidedly—a frequent trick with her, since it set her ear-rings to dancing until the precious stones seemed to emit sparks of real fire. "Ballad music is considered so low in refined circles. I have never cultivated any but the classical style—operas, you know, bravuras and arias, and all that, you know. Let me treat you to my favorite—just the sweetest thing you ever heard, from La Traviata. I perfectly dote upon it!"
She played a thumping prelude and accompaniment in villainous time; her voice was shallow and shrill; she made audacious dashes at trills and cadenzas, her feeble pipe breaking down upon the ascending, and breaking up upon the descending scale. A more lamentable and witless travestie of operatic execution could hardly have been conceived of. The Italian words were made a thing of no account whatever.
"Her resources are wonderful," said Orrin, under cover of the buzz of compliments and thanks that succeeded the song. "When she forgot what came next she substituted something of her own composition—in the Kaffir dialect, I think—with a readiness and coolness truly astounding. Honor bright, now," laughing down mischievously into his companion's eyes—"what has this little scene reminded you of—something you have hitherto viewed as a caricature?"
"I won't tell you!"
But Jessie's face was alive with fun. It might not be—it certainly was not altogether kind or well-bred in her to join in ridiculing the host's niece, but it was "only Orrin," and so long as his comments were for her ear alone, no harm was done.
"You need not! Miss Swartz has arisen above such 'low style' as 'Blue-eyed Mary' and 'That Air from the Cabinet,' but she can still 'sing Fluvy du Tajy if she had the words.' Indeed, being bent upon fascination, she sings it, words or no."