"A popular actress who left the stage almost sixteen years ago has returned to it again, and they say she is as young, lovely, and spirited as when she retired to marry a rich aristocrat. All paint, of course, but Sylvie is just wild to have us go and see her play on Thursday night."
[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
Una went with the girls to ransack the trunks, but she steadily declined to accept any of the finery they spread out on the bed and chairs.
"Eliot offered to give me a new dress this morning, and I told him I had plenty," she said, "so if I took any of these, he would think I had deceived him."
"You dear little conscientious thing, you are well named Una," cried Edith, gayly. "But Eliot would never know, and, my dear, this rose-colored satin with lace flounces would make up lovely for you, and be so becoming."
"It is too fine for me," Una answered, shrinkingly.
"Not a bit. A gold dress would not be too fine for Eliot's wife," vivaciously. "And you know, dear, at a theater-party one dresses as if for a ball. We shall have private boxes, you know, and every one will want to look nice. Now, you really have nothing fit to wear."
Una flushed sensitively, but she knew that it was true. She had nothing fine but the blue silk dinner-dress, except—and her heart throbbed painfully—the sweet, white dress with its filmy laces that she had worn for her strange marriage that starlit night in New Orleans beneath the green trees in the quaint semi-tropical garden. The dress, with the necklace of pearls, lay folded away in the bottom of her trunk.
"I have the white dress I wore when I was—married," she said, dubiously. "Perhaps it will do."