She gave me the fingers of an archly poised hand.
“It is a pleasure!”
“And Miss H., Mr. Derrizer.”
“I am very pleased!”
A pink, slim lily of a woman, say twenty-eight or thirty, very fragile-seeming, very Dresden-china-like as to color, a dream of light and Tyrian blue with some white interwoven, very keen as to eye, the perfection of hauteur as to manner, so well-bred that her voice seemed subtly suggestive of it all—that was Miss H.
To say that I was interested in this company is putting it mildly. The three women were so distinct, so individual, so characteristic, each in a different way. The Lady R. was all peace and repose—statuesque, weary, dark. Miss H. was like a ray of sunshine, pure morning light, delicate, gay, mobile. Mrs. W. was of thicker texture, redder blood, more human fire. She had a vigor past the comprehension of either, if not their subtlety of intellect—which latter is often so much better.
Mr. W. stood in the background, a short, stocky gentleman, a little bored by the trivialities of the social world.
“Ah, yes. Daygah! You like Daygah, no doubt,” interpolated Mrs. W., recalling us. “A lovely pigture, don’t you think? Such color! such depth! such sympathy of treatment! Oh!”
Mrs. W.’s hands were up in a pretty artistic gesture of delight.
“Oh, yes,” continued the Lady R., taking up the rapture. “It is saw human—saw perfect in its harmony. The hair—it is divine! And the poor man! he lives alone now, in Paris, quite dreary, not seeing any one. Aw, the tragedy of it! The tragedy of it!” A delicately carved vanity-box she carried, of some odd workmanship—blue and white enamel, with points of coral in it—was lifted in one hand as expressing her great distress. I confess I was not much moved and I looked quickly at Miss H. Her eyes, it seemed to me, held a subtle, apprehending twinkle.