"Gentlemen," she proposed, "you are all in evening dress; but I,"—and she shrugged her bewitching shoulders naïvely,—"I have been in this gown for ages—until I hate it. Will you indulge me a little longer?" And she inclined her head in the direction of the red portières through which she had gone that first night to don the diamonds for Hampstead.
Of course the gentlemen excused her, and Miss Dounay achieved another startling theatricalism by reappearing in an astonishingly short time, offering the most surprising contrast to her former self. The yellow and spangles were gone. In their place was the simplest possible gown of soft black velvet, with only a narrow band passing over the shoulders and framing a bust like marble for its whiteness against the black. The dress was entirely without ornament, presenting a supreme achievement of the art of the modiste, in that it appeared not so much to be a gown as a bolt of velvet, suddenly caught up and draped to screen her figure chastely but beautifully, at the same time it revealed and even emphasized those swelling curves and long lines which lost themselves elusively in the baffling pliancy of her remarkable figure. The hair was worn low upon the neck, and the jewels which had blazed in her coiffure like a dazzling crown were no longer in evidence. With them had gone the pendants from her ears, and that coruscating circlet of diamonds from the neck, which was her chief pride and most valuable single possession. There was not even a band of gold upon her arms, nor a ring upon her tapering finger. Hence what the admiring circle seemed to see was not something brilliant because bedizened, but a creature exquisite because genuine, a beauty depending for its power solely upon nature's comeliness.
No woman with less beauty or less art, desiring to be admired as Marien Dounay passionately did, could have dared this contrast successfully. No one who knew men less thoroughly than she would have understood that for a purely professional artist to attain this look of a simple womanly woman was the greatest possible triumph, stirring every instinct of admiration and of chivalry.
And whatever was at the back of the trick Miss Dounay had played—and there was generally something back of her caprices—in thrusting John Hampstead, with whom she had practically quarreled, into this group of guests, she appeared to forget him entirely in the succession of whims, moods, and graces with which she proceeded to their entertainment.
For one thing, she admitted them to the large room which served as her boudoir, into which they had seen her go in gold and spangles to emerge like a miracle in demure black velvet.
Of course, there was an excuse for thus titillating the curiosity of vigorous men with that lure of mysterious enchantment which lurks in the boudoir of a lovely woman, and the excuse was that the room, while half-boudoir, was also half-studio, and held tables on which were displayed the models of the stage sets and the costumer's designs for Miss Dounay's coming London production.
As the actress had divined, the inspection of these fascinating details of stagecraft interested her guests as much as the display of them delighted her.
In the hour which ensued before the supper, a collation that in its variety and substance again proved how well the actress comprehended the appetite of the male, two or three guests arrived tardily. The earliest of these to enter was Rollo Charles Burbeck, who came in ample time to roam about the room of mystery at will with the remainder of the guests. Indeed, he stayed in it so much that its enchantment for him might have been presumed to be greater than for the others.
Before the supper, too, one of the guests craved the liberty of departing. This was the Reverend John Hampstead. The farewell of his hostess was gracious and without the slightest reminiscence of anything unpleasant, but he was prevented from more than mentally congratulating himself upon the change in her manner toward him by the fact that in walking some ten feet from where he touched the fingers of his hostess to where a butler-sort of person, borrowed from the hotel staff, stood waiting with his overcoat, Doctor Hampstead came face to face with Rollie Burbeck, who was just emerging from the boudoir-studio with a disturbed look upon his usually placid face, as if, for instance, he had seen a ghost.
In consequence, the minister moved down the corridor to the elevator, not pondering upon his own perplexities, but thinking to himself, "I wonder now if that young man is in any serious trouble. It would break his mother's heart—it would kill her if he were."