"Then I am certainly past getting the benefit of Miss Carstairs' hint, Miss Bleecker, since Mr. Vereker asked me first, before seeing if he could get the others; and I was rash enough to accept."
CHAPTER V
MR. Vereker's little supper proved all that Miss Bleecker had claimed for it in the matter of exotic luxury. American beauty roses, as fresh as if they had bloomed that morning, decked the centre of the board, and a corsage bouquet of royal purple violets lay beside each lady's plate. The unpleasantly pallid host, with skin drawn like parchment over his lean jaws, his hair and mustache unnaturally black, sat at one end, and (to the dismay of Miss Bleecker, who had been made to fit in at the side) Miss Posey Winstanley upon his left, opposite my Lady Channel Fleet in a rumpled cotton blouse, still wearing the turquoise earrings, with the addition of a turquoise chain to hold her eyeglasses.
Posey, in severely plain white voile, with a picture hat and white feathers framing the waves of her splendid hair, thanked her stars that she had had Helen Carstairs' example in dress long enough to profit by it for this occasion. She saw in half a glance that her frock, the result of the best skill of the dressmaker at Alison's Cross Roads, who called her by name in fitting her, could not vie with the dove-colored confection with its all-over embroideries that sat so easily upon Helen's erect form. But she knew that it was unobtrusive, and the little slip of mirror above her washing-stand had told she was at her best.
It had been an ordeal that of dressing while her cross room-mate, who made a virtue of what she called "retiring" early, continued at intervals to extend her head like a turtle's from its shell, and inquire whether Miss Winstanley would be very much longer! Posey was fain to go outside and have the finishing touches put to her toilette by the stewardess, Mrs. Gasher, the bib of whose white apron covered sympathetic interest, since she knew about the supper, and that the ladies to be present were dead set against the beauty of the ship. When she had stuck the last pin, Mrs. Gasher maternally informed Miss Winstanley that she looked pretty enough to beat the Jews, and would find her 'ot water covered with a towel when she came in again to go to bed; and if she couldn't get undone herself, never to mind ringing up Mrs. Gasher.
Under this cheerful inspiration, Posey had marched into the saloon to find the others all in place, an empty chair kept for her at the host's left.
She had been hoping to be next Clandonald—for no reason but that she wanted it. Instead, she had but a cold glance from him across the table, at which she quailed because she thought she read in it displeasure. And immediately he turned back to his conversation with Prince Zourikoff about Silver or Trusts, or Labor, or some of those tiresome things, and looked at her no more. The only consolation for this awful blow was that Helen, sitting between Mariol and Bobby Vane, had smiled at her kindly when she came in late.
Miss Bleecker, beside the Graf von Bau, who occupied the seat to the left of Mrs. Vereker, decided that the world was out of joint. Lord Channel Fleet, at the right of his hostess, looked tired, and when Miss Bleecker effusively addressed him upon topics of contemporaneous interest in London, gave her but scant answers. Graf von Bau, after he had exhausted civilities with the lady of the feast, had but eyes and ears for the spot where Posey had already begun to outdo herself in characteristic nonsense.
"That girl!" said Miss Bleecker, between her teeth, to Mr. Charley Brownlow, a serious-faced, clean-shaven New York clubman of whom the utmost his friends and enemies could find to say was that he was "always everywhere." "It is not enough to defy poor dear Mrs. Vereker, who flatly said she should not be asked, but to make herself so conspicuous. See, every man at table, except you——"
"I don't know her, don't you know? Never met her anywhere," interposed Mr. Brownlow gravely.