Bea herself was the affirmative answer to that question. She was indeed gorgeous, a splendid brown butterfly with all kinds of iridescent effects gleaming through her gauzes. Dark velvet outlined her skirt and floating sleeves, and dark antennæ stood upright from the coils of her hair.
Marcia, who was with her, to Hayden's infinite relief, was a white butterfly, looking very lovely, but, as he noticed with concern, paler than he had ever seen her, and with something like distress in her eyes, quite perceptible to him if unnoticed by the rest. He could not keep his solicitude out of his voice and glance, and this, he felt instinctively, annoyed, instead of gratifying her; for almost immediately she assumed a gaiety of manner foreign to her usual gentle and rather cool reserve.
His attention was distracted for the moment by the arrival of Edith Symmes, and the little group paid her the momentary attention of an awed silence, for she had perpetrated what was, perhaps, the greatest atrocity of her life—a vivid scarlet gown which made her face look a livid wedge.
"Don't you like this frock?" she whispered complacently to Bea Habersham.
"No, you know it is a horror, Edith," that lady replied, with the bluntness of intimacy. "I think," turning and surveying her friend calmly from head to foot, "that it is the very worst I have ever seen you wear, and that is saying a great deal. It makes you look like green cheese. For Heaven's sake, put some other color on!"
"Not I." Edith was quite unruffled. "You know perfectly well, Bea, that if I wore what you and Kitty and the rest of the world would call decent clothes, that every one would say: 'How plain poor Edith Symmes is! She dresses well, but that can not make up for her lack of beauty,' But when I wear these perfectly dreadful, glaring things that I love, what is said of me? 'What a stylish, even a pretty woman, Edith Symmes might be, if she didn't wear such criminal clothes,' Don't you see, you handsome idiot, that I please myself and score at the same time?"
Not being able to refute these plausible arguments, Bea contented herself with stubbornly maintaining her point. "But red, Edith, why red? It is a nightmare. Who ever heard of a scarlet butterfly?"
Edith laughed lightly. "I invented one just for this occasion. Such a compliment to Mr. Hayden." Her serenity was not to be marred, and fortunately, before the discussion could go further, dinner was announced.
The dining‑room Kitty had transformed into a tropical bower. From an irregular lattice of boughs across the ceiling orchids fell as if they had grown and bloomed there. These were interspersed with long trails of Spanish moss in which the lights were cunningly disposed. Orchids swayed, too, from the tops of the tall palms which lined the walls, and above the bright mass of the same flowers on the table floated on invisible wires the most vivid and beautiful tropical butterflies.
Hayden was an admirable host. Possessing the faculty of enjoyment himself, he succeeded in communicating it to his guests; and the dinner, as it progressed, was an undeniable success. Marcia, on his right hand, had apparently thrown off the oppression or worry from which she had suffered earlier in the evening, and, according to Mrs. Habersham all through the afternoon; and her evident enjoyment was immensely reassuring to Hayden, for it seemed to him both natural and spontaneous.