My companion stared a moment and then remarked:
“Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come down!” Into these simple words was packed all the quintessence of disapproval that Cecilia had learned from her various advisers. There were echoes of her mother’s shocked tones, haunting accents of her offended teacher, all welded together by the cool disapproval that was Cecilia’s own.
I am sure that if my delightful little guest could have heard the awful, the chilling, contempt of “Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair has come down,” she would have veiled her face with it in abject shame.
I gathered by her attitude and that of Felicia and Almington that these silly creatures were playing at tableaux, the cart serving as a Mi-carême char.
Mrs. Massingbyrd’s hair, more miraculous than ever in the moonlight, fell down to her knees. Her eyes looked seraphically heavenward. Almington held her hand, kneeling before her, while Felicia, a little shawl disposed as drapery about her, was pointing dramatically out into the night, giving an admirable impersonation of those statuesque young ladies who, in tableaux, have no raison d’être save to round out the composition and look pretty.
Later I learned that the name of this impressive tableau was: “The Triumph of Virtue.”
At that moment I was too occupied with the attitude of my little companion to pay attention to Mrs. Massingbyrd’s foolery.
Cecilia had just caught sight of Almington as he knelt, holding the hand of Virtue, his lean legs bent like the blade of a knife. Almington generally cuts a fine figure, through a certain sense of the fitness of things. His air of secret melancholy wins half his battles for him, and he is one of those men who must at any cost hang on to the last shred of dignity, as they are nothing without it. In his present situation I have no hesitation in saying he looked fatuous and grotesque.
How he came to lend himself to the crazy whim of the two girls I can’t tell. I suppose he was carried away by the flood of their high spirits, as many a wiser man has been before him and will be after him.
But if I had excuses for him, Cecilia had none.