“She said an airey. She meant an heiress.”
“Oh, yes, an heiress. I don’t doubt it, from her appearance, and Mr. Stanley’s attentions. Stylish looking isn’t she?”
“Rather, yes—magnificent eyes at all events,” and the doctor stroked his mustache thoughtfully, while his mother, turning to Mrs. Buford, began to compliment ’Lina’s form, and the fit of her dress.
Money, or the reputation of possessing money, is an all powerful charm, and in a few places does it show its power more plainly than at Saratoga, where it was soon known that the lady from Spring Bank was heiress to immense wealth in Kentucky, how immense nobody knew, and various were the estimates put upon it. Among Mrs. Buford’s clique it was twenty thousand; farther away and in another hall it was fifty, while Mrs. Richards, ere the supper hour arrived, had heard that it was at least a hundred thousand dollars. How or where she heard it she hardly knew, but she endorsed the statement as correct, and at the tea table that night was exceedingly gracious to ’Lina and her mother, offering to divide a little private dish which she had ordered for herself, and into which poor Mrs. Worthington inadvertently dipped, never dreaming that it was not common property.
“It was not of the slightest consequence, Mrs. Richards was delighted to share it with her,” and that was the way the conversation commenced.
’Lina knew now that the proud man whose lip had curled so scornfully at dinner, was Dr. Richards, and Dr. Richards knew that the girl who sat on the floor was ’Lina Worthington, from Spring Bank, where Alice Johnson was going.
“I did not gather from Mr. Liston that these Worthingtons were wealthy,” he said to himself, “but if the old codger would deceive me with regard to Miss Johnson, he would with regard to them,” and mentally resolving to make an impression before they could see and talk with Alice, the doctor was so polite that ’Lina scarcely knew whose attentions to prefer, his or Irving Stanley’s, who, rather glad of a co-worker, yielded the field without a struggle, and by the time tea was over the doctor’s star was in the ascendant.
How ’Lina wanted to stay in the crowded parlors, but her mother had so set her heart upon seeing Alice Johnson, that she was forced to humor her, and repaired to her room to make a still more elaborate toilet, as she wished to impress Miss Johnson with a sense of her importance.
A pale blue silk, with white roses in her hair, was finally decided upon, and when, just as the gas was lighted; she descended with her mother to the parlor, her opera cloak thrown gracefully around her uncovered shoulders, and Ellen Tiffton’s glass in her hand, she had the satisfaction of knowing that she created quite a sensation, and that others than Dr. Richards looked after her admiringly as she swept through the room, followed by her mother and Lulu, the latter of whom was answering no earthly purpose save to show that they had a servant.