“Oh, don’t be vain!” said the lady. “Remember—I was like you once.”
Which gave Sylvia an opportunity of the sort she understood. “I will look forward,” she said, “to the prospect of being like you.”
The radiant lady pressed her hand. “Very pretty, my child,” she said. “Quite Southern, too! But I must take you in and give the others some of this joy.”
Such was the beginning of the acquaintance so utterly different from all possible beginnings, as Sylvia had imagined them. She found in Edith Winthrop, whom she met a few minutes later, a person much nearer to what she had expected in the mother. Miss Edith had her mother’s beauty and her mother’s pride, but no trace of her mother’s sybilline qualities. A badly spoiled young lady, was Sylvia’s first verdict upon this New England belle; a verdict which she delivered promptly to her infatuated cousin, and which she never found occasion to revise.
The friendship thus begun progressed rapidly. Mrs. Winthrop asked if she might call, and coming the next day, discovered in Aunt Varina the perfect type of the Southern gentlewoman. So the three were soon absorbed in talking genealogy. At Miss Abercrombie’s Sylvia had been surprised to learn that it was bad form to talk about one’s ancestors; but apparently it was still permissible in Boston—as it assuredly was in the South.
Mrs. Winthrop invited Sylvia to a party she was giving; and when Sylvia spoke of having to leave Boston, “Oh, stay,” said the great lady. “Come and stay with me—always!” Finally Sylvia said that she would come to the party.
“I’ll invite your cousin for the extra man,” said the other. “It is to be a new kind of party—you know how desperately one has to struggle to keep one’s guests from being bored. I got this idea from a Southern man, so perhaps it’s an old story to you—a ‘Progressive Love’ party?”
“Oh, yes, we often have them,” replied Sylvia. She had not supposed that these intellectual people would condescend to such play—having pictured Boston society as occupied in translating Meredith and Henry James.
“People have to be amused the world over,” said Mrs. Winthrop. And when Sylvia looked surprised to have her thought read, the other gave her a long look, and smiled a deep smile. “Sylvia,” she propounded, “you and I understand each other. We are made of exactly the same material.”