She arose from the chair where Mr. Rosevelt had placed her, drew herself up proudly, her eyes gleaming as bright as the diamonds in her ears, and, entirely ignoring the coarse woman’s malicious thrust, she looked up at her companion, and said, in her clearest, sweetest tones:
“Uncle Jacob, I believe we were going out to see the illumination.”
“True, child, true,” he said, taking her white-gloved hand and laying it upon his arm, while he cast a dark look upon his niece for her cowardly attack. “Come, we will go at once;” and with a formal inclination to Mrs. Richards and her daughter, but with an angry gleam in his eyes, he led Star from the room, shutting the door, with no gentle sound, after them.
“Did you ever hear anything like it!” Mrs. Richards said, hopelessly, after they had gone.
“No, indeed; and it is just as you suspected—he was playing poverty all the time,” Josephine answered.
“Oh, if I could only have known it!” groaned her mother, to whom the calamity appeared to grow more appalling every moment.
“He makes a perfect fool of himself over that girl,” snapped Josephine, ill-naturedly. “Just think of the amount of money it must have cost to deck her out to-night.”
“I am going back to our hotel,” Mrs. Richards said, rising, with a desperate air. “I am not going to stay here to see her play the fine lady and crow over us.”
“I’m ready to go. I’ve had enough of this thing, and I never did like the —— House very well, anyway,” replied her daughter, in no amiable tones.