Polly departed chuckling and Zelda went to her room.
Her father was reading his newspaper by the fireplace when she came in upon his startled gaze an hour later. She had arrayed herself in a white silk evening gown. He had never before seen her dressed so at their family dinner-table. The long skirt added to her height. Her hair was caught up from her forehead in an exaggeration of the prevailing mode.
“Good evening, father! I thought I’d dress up to-night just for fun, and to get the crinkles out of my things. Isn’t this gown a perfect love? It’s real Parisian.”
She swept past, the rich silk brushing him, and then,—Polly having appeared at the door with her eyes staring from her head,—
“Now let us feast while we may,” she said.
She passed before him into the dining-room with an inclination of her head and to her place.
The old man had not spoken and he sat down with painstaking care, finding apparently some difficulty in drawing in his chair. He bowed his head for the silent grace he always said, and raised his eyes with a look of sweet resignation to the girl.
“We are dining en fête, father,” Zelda began hastily. “I felt that we must be gay to-night,—something seemed to be in the air,—and I thought it well to celebrate. It’s funny, isn’t it, how every day must be an anniversary of something! I’m sure something noble and cheerful must have happened on this day a hundred years ago. Where do you buy celery? I wish you’d tell them that it’s perfectly dreadful; this to-day is as tough as wire.”
Nothing in the old house ever escaped his sharp eyes. The old china with its gold band, and the cut glass that had not known service for years struck him at once.
Ezra Dameron did not understand much about human nature, though like all cunning people he thought he did. It was beginning to dawn upon him that Zelda was deeper than he had imagined. Perhaps, he said to himself, she was as shrewd and keen as himself; or, he asked again, was she not playing some deep rôle,—even laying a trap for him? He did not know that the moods of a girl are as many as the moods of the wind and sea. He remembered that his wife had been easily deceived. He had crushed the mother; but this girl would not so easily be subdued. The candles made a soft light upon the table. He lifted his eyes furtively to see whether the gas in the chandelier overhead was lighted; and was relieved to note that the extravagance of the candles was not augmented there. He drew his bony fingers across the table-cloth, feeling its texture critically. He knew that it had been taken from a forbidden shelf of the linen closet. Clearly his rule over the ancient Polly was at an end.