"Color and lordliness," sighed Mme. Violet. "Ah, there are no troubadours, no spurred cavaliers, no mailed knights in this busy America—not even scarlet soldiers parading. You men are so dingy, dingy in your black propriety. Why be so funereal? My heart goes out sometimes to a very mountebank, all spangled and jingling like a tambourine when he moves. Color! Give me color. Ah, it is not we who have taste, it is the canaille! It is Victorine, my lady's maid, with her bonnet-ribbons flaunting all the colors of the rainbow."
A silk banner lay outspread in Rosalie's lap, throwing warm blushes against her throat. It was the prize for the gentlemen's steeplechase, which was to close the programme of the afternoon.
"Scarlet, sea-blue and gold," she cried, stroking the tasseled fringe which justified the last addition. "Are not these the primary hues, the major chord of color, and the white their perfect blending?"
The Violet laughed. When addressing her directly or referring to her in her own presence, people carefully called her Mme. Violet. But to the world, out of earshot, she was simply the Violet, just as Cleopatra is Cleopatra. It was taken for granted that her blood was French, but Count L'Alienado, noting her fawn-brown eyes and the strong black hair, which made Rosalie's fluff appear like carded golden silk—thought he detected the marks of the Romany. Yet the full mouth hinted at a Spanish cross. She was not very young, or, at first sight, very beautiful, but she possessed a diablerie stronger than girlhood or beauty, and gossip said the Earl of Marmouth was succumbing to its spell.
"The signal!" cried Rosalie, as the notes of a hunting-horn pealed, faint and mellow, from a distant quarter. "It is time to start."
For several minutes the occupants of the barouche lay back, reveling in the luxury of the cushions and in the changing view which the drive afforded. Other equipages swept into the main road here and there, from cottage and mansion and by-path, each freighted with its cargo of flower-raimented beauty. Marshals in velvet hunting garb galloped up and down, with low salutes to the passengers and brusque orders to the coachmen. On the top of a little hill there came a pause while the procession was arranging itself, and the conversation rippled out again.
"The color is overdone," said the Earl of Marmouth. "It smacks of Latin degeneracy."
"Such as appears in the canvases of Titian?" asked Count L'Alienado quietly.
The Violet, sitting opposite him, caressed her bronze-eyed spaniel to her cheek, so that she might survey the newcomer more closely. His lordship, at her side, alone of the party had sat upright during the ride.
"You are Spanish, not Italian, I am told," he said, much in the tone of a hotel clerk demanding the settlement of an overdue bill. The Violet's eyes met the count's interrogatively.