"The brocade, miss? It ain't suitable, miss. A deal too dressy."
Dorothea slewed round in her chair and looked up with an expression which sent Louisa off to fetch the silver brocade without another word. Persuasion was no good with Dorothea. Flat contradiction might sometimes avail; and the flatter it was, the more likely to hit the turning angle of that incalculable young person. But if it did not chance to hit that angle—well, there was nothing for it but prompt obedience.
Dorothea, a world-weary cynic of twenty-one, not infrequently thought in terms of the penny novelettes which were her favorite reading. She had conceived the idea of arraying herself for conquest, after the fashion of the Lady Ermyntrude in The Heart of a Countess. Every evening hitherto she had worn what the author of that interesting romance might have described as "a modest little black frock of some soft, clinging material." The brocade was full dress; it had a short-waisted bodice, with strands of silver crossing on the breast and a silver girdle. The petticoat, heavily embroidered, was short enough to show her silver shoes. Over her shoulders, jasmine-white and dimpled, fell a scarf of silver gauze; and there were diamond stars in the darkness of her hair. In fine, when Louisa had done with her, she was herself a star of loveliness bright enough to dazzle anybody.
Lettice was waiting in the hall to see her cousin start, Denis having as usual got ready half-an-hour too soon, with his rod and his rug and his bag and a basket for Geraldine the kitten. They were exchanging those labored last words which even the best of friends manufacture while the carriage delayeth its coming, when this vision swept down on them, with her nose in the air. Evidently Dorothea had not forgiven Lettice for cutting short her talk, or Denis for suffering it to be done. She sailed on to the salon, where her entrance was greeted with a comically sudden hush, such as fell on the dinner-table when a new course made its appearance. Lettice relieved her feelings with one of her favorite words; not "nice" this time, but "Well!"
"There, you see you've lost me a commission, Lettice!" said Denis, laughing.
"Me? I didn't do anything!"
"What's up?" asked Gardiner. He had come out of his den, with a pot of flowers in his arms, just in time to witness the transit of Venus, and had been favored, in contradistinction to the others, with a gracious smile; his face had changed, ever so little, in response. Denis opened his lips to reply, but Lettice was too quick for him.
"Why, Miss O'Connor and I were having such a nice cozy talk together, and Denis would come bothering with his old aeroplanes" (the tone of spite was delicious), "and of course she didn't like it, and now he's cross with me because she doesn't want to buy one! Robs me of my only friend, and they says it's my fault, and abuses me like, like—like a pickpocket! Well, well!"
Nobody could play the injured innocent better than Lettice, above all when she was in the wrong. She played with Denis as delicately as a kitten plays with a leaf. "Yes, you're an ill-used person, aren't you?" he said. He put his arm round her shoulders and gently pressed her down into a chair; he would never let her stand if he could help it. "At any rate, you're not in it, Harry," he said, speaking over her head to Gardiner. "She's not carried over our sins to you, that's one good thing!"
"Yes, didn't I get a beamer?" said Gardiner, with his easy laugh. He fell back to observe the flowers he had been arranging. "Not that I should afflict myself if she did. So long as she pays her bill, it's all one to me!"