As they sat through a dinner, not elaborate, but as prolonged as if it were composed of all the courses on the menu, Hepworth was struck by the positive quality of Fuschia's beauty. It was not always so, evidently. She was as changeful as the chameleon she had spoken of. In the garden that afternoon, in her white serge frock, she had at first impressed him as a pale, rather attractive looking young woman whose charm was greater than her prettiness; but viewed in the rose-colored lights, and across the pink blossoms on their small table, she was a very wonderful creature. She was, in truth, wild with joy and her expression of it was delightful. Her eyes were blue as the sea when the sun is one vast sparkle over it, her mouth, made for laughter, grew curlier every moment. Her white evening gown was a dream.
In addition to her admirable outward appearance, Miss Fuschia Fleming was a comédienne of unsurpassed gifts. She was also witty, well-read and sweet-natured, and when she chose to exert herself she could make sixty minutes seem sixty seconds by any one's watch, even that of the grimmest old curmudgeon, and Hepworth certainly was not the grimmest old curmudgeon. He was only a very lonely and sad-hearted man whose days had been hanging heavily on his hands.
"Good old Jim," he soliloquized as he took his way homeward that evening. "He believed sufficiently in my friendship to come right to me when he was in a hole. Made no bones about it. Asked me to keep an eye on his daughter, sure enough of my affection for him to know I'd do it. I shouldn't wonder if this Idaho proposition is a good thing if it's properly financed. Jim's judgment is pretty sound. Well, we'll see, we'll see."
CHAPTER XIII
SHOCKING THE HEWSTONS
As the winter wore on the weather in New York offered daily a more violent and odious comparison to the blue seas and balmy airs of California. The cold, sullen skies, dull, damp days and piercing winds set more than one dreaming of sunshine and summer, and among the many was Alice Wilstead.
She was pondering thus, looking about her with surprise, one especially snowy, dreary winter afternoon as she took her way to Mrs. Hewston's. It was one of those thoroughly depressing days when nothing could really raise one's spirits but the inspiring glow of firelight. Mrs. Wilstead certainly looked as if she needed that and all positively cheering if not inebriating things as she entered Mrs. Hewston's drawing-room. Her piquant dark face was meant for smiles and gaiety, all of her features apparently designed to that end, for the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the slant of her eyes, all inclined upward. It is a tragedy when a person of such countenance is in an introspective or melancholy mood. Sober meditations have an aging and blighting effect on the features of those born to look out upon the world with an arch and piquant interest.
Isabel Hewston roused herself a little reluctantly. She was sitting alone most comfortably in a delightfully easy chair, she had on a becoming and loose Paris tea-gown. She had resolutely put behind her the haunting specter of increasing flesh, had taken an afternoon off from the persistent and continued battle she had been forced to wage with it, and now lay, a box of sweets on the table beside her, a new novel in her hand, enjoying to the full her temporary respite. It is to her credit that she put aside her book at the most nerve-tingling paragraph without a sigh.
"Dear Alice," she exclaimed, lifting herself on one elbow, "you have a bad-news look all over you, the very rustle of your skirt proclaims it. What can be the matter?"