She rose as she spoke, and with a pat of her hand adjusted her glimmering skirts.
"Oh, Mr. Faraday," she said, as she peered down at them, "I hope you'll give yourself the pleasure of calling on me. I'm at home almost any afternoon after five, and Tuesday is my day. Come whenever you please. I'll be real glad to see you, and I guess popper'd like to talk to you about things in the East. He's been in Massachusetts too."
She held out her large white hand and gave Faraday a vigorous hand-shake.
"I'm glad I came here tonight," she said, smiling. "I wasn't quite decided, but I thought I'd better, as I had some things to tell Mrs. Peck for next Sunday's Trumpet. If I hadn't come, I wouldn't have met you. You needn't escort me to Madame Delmonti. I'd rather go by myself. I'm not a bit a ceremonious person. Good-by. Be sure and come and see me."
She rustled away, exchanged farewells with Madame Delmonti, and, by a movement of her head in his direction, appeared to be speaking of Faraday; then joining a fur-muffled female figure near the doorway, swept like a princess out of the room.
For a week after Faraday's meeting with Miss. Genevieve Ryan, he had no time to think of giving himself the pleasure of calling upon that fair and flattering young lady. The position which he had come out from Boston to fill was not an unusually exacting one, but Faraday, who was troubled with a New England conscience, and a certain slowness in adapting himself to new conditions of life, was too engrossed in mastering the duties of his clerkship to think of loitering about the chariot wheels of beauty.
By the second week, however, he had shaken down into the new rut, and a favorable opportunity presenting itself in a sunny Sunday afternoon, he donned his black coat and high hat and repaired to the mansion of Barney Ryan, on California Street.
When Faraday approached the house, he felt quite timid, so imposingly did this great structure loom up from the simpler dwellings which surrounded it. Barney Ryan had built himself a palace, and ever since the day he had first moved into it he had been anxious to move out. The ladies of his family would not allow this, and so Barney endured his grandeur as best he might. It was a great wooden house, with immense bay windows thrown out on every side, and veiled within by long curtains of heavy lace. The sweep of steps that spread so proudly from the portico was flanked by two sleeping lions in stone, both appearing, by the savage expressions which distorted their visages, to be suffering from terrifying dreams. In the garden the spiked foliage of the dark, slender dracænas and the fringed fans of giant filamentosas grew luxuriantly with tropical effect.
The large drawing-room, long, and looking longer with its wide mirrors, was even more golden than Mrs. Delmonti's. There were gold moldings about the mirrors and gold mountings to the chairs. In deserts of gold frames appeared small oases of oil-painting. Faraday, hat in hand, stood some time in wavering indecision, wondering in which of the brocaded and gilded chairs he would look least like a king in an historical play. He was about to decide in favor of a pale blue satin settee, when a rustle behind him made him turn and behold Miss. Genevieve magnificent in a trailing robe of the faintest rose-pink and pearls, with diamond ear-rings in her ears, and the powder that she had hastily rubbed on her face still lying white on her long lashes. She smiled her rare smile as she greeted him, and sitting down in one of the golden chairs, leaned her head against the back, and said, looking at him from under lowered lids:
"Well, I thought you were never coming!"