“My dear Jane,” replied the judge—he had gone to school with Mrs. Allestree—; “I’d forgotten that it wasn’t a strawberry vine. Do you remember those we stole from old Mr. White’s patch a thousand years ago?”
“Do I?” the old woman sighed; “Stephen,” she said, “how much nicer they were than these! I wonder if I stole some now—”
“I should send you to jail,” he retorted, twinkling, “the second offense, you know!”
“You stole those yourself!” she replied indignantly, “I was only accessory after the fact! Who in the world is that?” she added, catching her breath and craning her neck to peep through the throng.
It was Margaret White. She had just come from the fancy-ball where it had been her whim to appear as Ophelia. Perhaps her conscience had pinched her for her treatment of Mrs. Vermilion in Allestree’s studio, or it had merely pleased her to go. It was often impossible to find the key to her conduct. At any rate she had gone, and she came late to Mrs. O’Neal’s, where she was to meet her husband, for he had refused to go in costume to the Vermilions’. He was a man of too heavy common sense to trick himself out in fancy dress, and on that one point he knew his own limitations; he had never been able to play a part to his own satisfaction, and he had too high an opinion of Wicklow White to belittle him with a failure. So it happened that he had already had his fortune told by the enchantress in the conservatory when a ripple of excitement from the ballroom reached him.
When Mrs. Allestree spoke the crowd had parted to let Margaret pass through it. She wore a flowing, soft, white gown, thin, clinging, revealing her neck and arms and the long slim lines of her figure; her hair, which was beautiful and an unusual tint of pale brown, was unbound and hanging, trimmed with flowers, while her arms were full of them.
There was a silence; every eye was on her, and there was an instantaneous recognition of her remarkable fitness for the part; the delicate, subtle beauty of her face, her brilliant eyes, with the dusky shadows below them, the longing, the pain, the uninterpreted feeling of her expression, her wild hair, her slim, graceful figure, the appealing beauty of her slender white hands as she held them out, offering rosemary and rue and daisies, was she really an actress born or—the very nymph herself? That mystic atmosphere of tragedy which sometimes seemed to pervade her being had at last found an expression at once visible and beautiful.
It was her whim to play the part out, and people watched her, fascinated; those who did not approve of her, those who disliked her, as well as those who fell under her spell, watched her with undisguised eagerness. She drew all eyes and knew it. She looked up and saw her husband standing in the door of the conservatory; their eyes met with a challenge; they had quarrelled woefully over her coming in this dress, and it only needed the sight of him to kindle her wilful daring, her abominable obstinacy. Some one called her by name and spoke to her but, unheeding, she began to sing Ophelia’s song, throwing flowers as she walked slowly, very slowly down the crowded room.
“Hey non nonny, nonny, hey nonny!” she sang.
There was a little breathless applause, but she met it with a vacant look, coming on, tossing a rose here, a lily there, to be caught by some ready hand.