With these thoughts running through her mind, the fascinating, violet-eyed daughter of Colonel Van Ashton lightly dipped the tips of her dainty fingers into a rouge-pot, glanced into the mirror and drew them across her lips, and then deliberately attired herself in one of her smartest gowns preparatory to flinging the first bones of condescension to the rustic Yankton; the preliminaries of a series of expectations and hopes deferred that were intended to reduce him to a state of submission suitable to receive the final kick which was to leave Mr. Yankton a wiser but a sadder man.
XVIII
Blanch stood before a long mirror that adorned one of the walls of her room, trying the effect of a new tea-gown.
The mirror was an ancient piece of furniture consisting of a faded gilt frame and six separate rows of large, unevenly fitting squares of glass; the style that was in vogue two centuries ago. As she regarded herself in it, she saw herself reflected in sections, probably with much the same effect as Marie Antoinette saw her reflection at Versailles.
"Coronada must have brought this mirror with him on his first expedition," she remarked to Bessie who lounged on the sofa on the opposite side of the room amid a heap of florid cushions. "I feel as though I had a personal grudge against that man," she continued, vainly endeavoring to catch an unbroken outline of herself in the glass.
"It's stunning, Blanch!" broke in Bessie from the sofa. "What is it—a Worth?"
"No—a Doucet. Isn't it absurd that I should array myself in these gorgeous gowns to compete with that Indian in her few flimsy calicoes and silks? The contrast is out of all proportion. It's the sublime and the ridiculous. And yet she looks well in anything! Dress her in rags and she is picturesque; robe her in silks and she is fascinating."
"That's just what I can't understand," said Bessie. "We couldn't wear her clothes, but she can wear ours. Why is it?"
"It's quite simple. We have been handicapped from the start because we have been forced to compete with them on their own ground. They are perfectly natural; they have nothing and aspire to nothing, while we are wholly artificial—have everything and aspire to more."
"Why, to hear you, one would think that Jack was talking!" exclaimed Bessie in genuine surprise.