And as Miss Leigh entered her victoria the young lady rushed off, up the street, straining her eyes in the direction of the park.
That night "the ball," as Miss McSheen called it, came off and was a huge success, as was duly chronicled in all the morning papers next day with an elaboration of description of millinery in exact proportion to the degree of prominence of the wearer in the particular circle in which the editor or his reporter moved or aspired to move. Mrs. Argand stood first in "Wine-colored velvet, priceless lace," of the sort that reporters of the female sex deem dearest, and "diamonds and rubies" that would have staggered Sinbad, the sailor. Miss McSheen ran her a close second, in "rose-colored satin, and sapphires," spoken of as "priceless heirlooms." Miss Leigh shone lower down in "chiffon, lace, and pearls of great price." So they went columns-full, all priceless, all beautiful, all superlative, till superlatives were exhausted, and the imagination of the reporters ran riot in an excess of tawdry color and English.
Among the men especially lauded were, first, a certain Mr. James Canter, son and partner of "the famous Mr. Canter, the capitalist and financier," who gave promise of rivalling his father in his "notorious ability," and, secondly, a Count Pushkin, the "distinguished scion of a noble house of international reputation who was honoring the city with his distinguished presence, and was generally credited with having led captive the heart of one of the city's fairest and wealthiest daughters." So ran the record. And having nothing to do, I read that morning the account and dwelt on the only name I recognized, the young lady of the white chiffon and pearls, and wondered who the men were whose names stood next to hers.
XI
ELEANOR LEIGH
Miss Leigh also read the papers that morning and with much amusement till in one of them—the most sensational of all the morning journals—she came on an article which first made her heart stop beating and then set it to racing with sheer anger. To think that such a slander could be uttered! She would have liked to make mince-meat of that editor. He was always attacking her father.
A little later she began to think of the rest of the article! What was the truth? Did they have the right to stop the train and hold it back? This sort of thing was what a writer whom she knew denied in a series of papers which a friend of hers, a young clergyman who worked among the poor, had sent her and which the press generally was denouncing.
She had for some time been reading these papers that had been appearing in the press periodically. They were written by a person who was generally spoken of as "a Jew," but who wrote with a pen which had the point of a rapier, and whose sentences ate into the steely plate of artificial convention like an acid. One of the things he had said had stuck in her memory. "As the remains of animalculæ of past ages furnish, when compressed in almost infinite numbers, the lime-food on which the bone and muscle of the present race of cattle in limestone regions are built up, so the present big-boned race of the wealthy class live on the multitudinous class of the poor."
The summer before she had met the writer of these articles and he had made an impression on her which had not been effaced. She had not analyzed her feelings to ascertain how far this impression was due to his classical face, his deep, luminous eyes, and his impassioned manner, yet certain it is that all of these had struck her.