Mrs. Underbunk raised her glasses and inspected Constance eagerly.
"She has a little color to-night," she said.
"That is one of her charms," said I, refusing her proffered glasses. "It does enhance her beauty. Ordinarily, you know, she is rather of the marble-statuesque style."
"A style men admire very much when it's fixed on a gold pedestal," said Mrs. Underbunk. She had recovered her temper, and was smiling.
My heart was beating outrageously fast, and for my own preservation I had about determined not to punish her further.
"I said that I had vowed," I began. But she suddenly became interested in her glasses.
"Who are those people in the third box from that absurd-looking person in red with a diamond coronet in her hair?" she said. "Everybody is staring at them. You see the sad-looking little man sitting beside a very tall, thin girl? That other, I suppose, is her mother—looks like the old woman who went to market, only her gown has been snipped off from the top."
"It's Mrs. Very," I answered, a bit nettled that Mrs. Underbunk had become interested in others; but women are generally more than a match for us. "The little man is the Earl of Less—the Verys have just bought him. But I said I had vowed——"
She was most exasperating. Of course I knew that she was only playing a game, but it angered me to be wasting these precious minutes between the acts telling her who everybody was. By and by, however, she did dismount from her high horse, and inquired sweetly, "You said you had once vowed?"