In the warm atmosphere of their love and confidence their characters had unfolded, and they had learned to know one another perfectly. Jack, although he held a world-wide reputation for keen analysis of character on paper, had been amazed at all the delicate susceptibilities cherished in Dora’s heart, at the freshness and innocent pleasures of which it was capable, and not a little at the vein of malicious fun he had wholly unsuspected.
I sat silent while they chatted, reflecting upon the strange discovery of the photograph of my lost love, and the more remarkable encounter that afternoon, I had called on Jack for the purpose of making a clean breast of the whole affair, but Dora’s arrival precluded me from so doing. My sorrow, however, lost none of its bitterness by keeping, and I resolved to return to him on the morrow, show him the portraits, and ask his advice.
Jack had been admiring her gown, and the conversation had turned upon the evergreen topic of dress. But she spoke with the air of a philosopher rather than of a Society girl.
“Everyday life needs all the romance that can be crowded into it,” she said. “Dress, in my opinion, is a duty to ourselves and to others—is a piece of altruism unsoured by sacrifice, a joy so long as it may last to wearer and beholder, doing good openly nor blushing to find itself famous.”
“Your view is certainly correct,” I said, smiling at her sedate little speech. “You are a pretty woman, and without committing yourself to affectation or eccentricity, you may choose the mode that shall best become you, whether born of Worth’s imagination or founded on some picturesque tradition. You may be severe or splendid, avenante or rococo, with equal impunity.”
“Really you are awfully complimentary, Mr Ridgeway,” she answered, with just the faintest blush of modesty. “You are such a flatterer that one never knows whether you are in earnest.”
“I’m quite in earnest, I assure you,” I said. “Your dresses always suit you admirably. On any other woman they would look dowdy.”
“I quite endorse Stuart’s opinion,” said Jack with enthusiasm. “In writing it is often my misfortune to be compelled to describe feminine habiliments, therefore I’ve tried to study them a little. It seems to me that the ball-dress may be festal, the dinner-dress majestic, and the outdoor frock combine the virtues of both; but romance must always centre in the tea-gown. Before the advent of the tea-gown, the indoor state of woman was innocent of comfort and beggared of poetry.”
“Yes,” she replied, clasping her hands behind her head and looking up at him with her soft brown eyes, “the tea-gown is always ingenuous in sentiment and not wanting in charm, even though its hues may be odious or sickly. Once it was looked upon with disfavour as a garment too graceful to be respectable, and stern parents, I believe, forbade its use. But time, taste, and the sense of fitness have put Puritanism to shame, and the useful tea-gown; bears witness now to our proficiency in the long-lost art of living.”
Her reference to stern parents caused me to refer to what Mabel had told me regarding the attitude of her mother.