Chapter IV: Part 4

She paused for a moment, as she gathered up in one hand the soft white folds of her gown. "I wish your faith could perform miracles," she said. And then she followed dreamily in the wake of the well-worn black satin gown, which had been seen, on many another festive occasion, on the broad back of the Rector's wife.

"He does disapprove of me," the girl thought to herself. "He would have liked me better if I were a little bread-and-butter miss, in white muslin and blue ribbons, who babbled of green fields and taught a class in Sunday school. That's the kind of woman he admires. He thinks me hard and flippant, but--I don't care. At least he dropped that weary, society manner. It is something to have inspired him with an emotion of some sort, even if it happens to be disapproval."

_Chapter XIV_

The Rector's wife, after the first surprise, was very glad to see Elizabeth. It made her feel more at home, and she drew her down now eagerly, beside her on the sofa by the fire, whose warmth on that autumn evening modified the somewhat chill atmosphere of the state drawing-room.

"My dear Elizabeth, I never expected to see you here." Increased respect mingled with the surprise in her tone. Elizabeth had certainly gone up several degrees in her estimation. "It's quite an honor to be asked--the Courtenays never are, I know, though don't repeat that I said so. Of course we are asked every year, as is only due, you know, to the Rector's position, my dear; but almost always the children are ill, or something goes wrong, and it's three years now since we've been able to come. It was unfortunate our being late this time. Do you think Mrs. Bobby was much annoyed?" The Rector's wife lowered her voice anxiously, as she for the first time waited for a response.

"Oh, no," Elizabeth was able truthfully to assure her. "I'm sure she wasn't annoyed."

"Well, to be sure, the Hartingtons were later"--in a tone of relief--"but these great swells can do as they please. You look very nice, Elizabeth, very nice indeed. I never saw that dress before. It must be pleasant to have something new occasionally"--and the Rector's wife gave a gentle sigh. "You see I have had the color changed on this dress--red, I think, makes it look quite different, and it is warm and pretty for the autumn. Don't repeat this, Elizabeth, but I wore the same dress here the last time I came to dinner four years ago--only then it was trimmed with pale blue. It was summer, you see, so it looked cool. Do you suppose Mrs. Bobby would remember?"

"Oh, I don't suppose Mrs. Bobby cares"--Elizabeth began absently "much about dress," she added, hastily. She was looking vaguely about her, wondering as the familiar voice meandered on, if she were really at dinner at the Van Antwerps', or prosaically seated as she had so often been before, in the Rectory parlor.

Mrs. Hartington, a large fair woman, very splendidly dressed, had seized upon Mrs. Bobby and was talking to her on a sofa at the other end of the room.

"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty, and--a--not bad form. That gown of hers is effective--it's so simple. I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."

"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby, in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." This very innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.

"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose--a red-haired bar-maid, wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced, dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.

Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither, perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight; but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on making her feel at home.

"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses out at night, but if one always thought of that, one would never go anywhere."

"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A dinner-party is a great event to me."

"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You know, between ourselves"--lowering his voice--"Eleanor doesn't always take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel rather sore--I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we shall see a great deal of you."

Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.

"Come," she said, "I want you to play for me. I'm so fond of music, and I've heard that you play beautifully."

"Ah, but I don't," Elizabeth protested; but still she allowed herself to be led to the piano, without undue reluctance. And then that grand piano, with the name of the maker had been tempting her to try it ever since dinner-time.

After all, it is doubtful if Mrs. Bobby cared so very much for music; but it is possible she knew of some one else who did. Elizabeth had a gift which had come to her, Heaven knows how!--a gift in which far greater pianists are sometimes lacking--the power to throw herself into what she played and to infuse into it something of her own personality. Her playing seemed no mere, mechanical repetition of what she had been taught, but the unstudied, spontaneous expression of her own thoughts and feelings. As she passed at Mrs. Bobby's request from one thing to another, mingling more set compositions with fragments from operas and songs of the day, the conversation between Mrs. Hartington and Gerard slackened, and he glanced more and more frequently towards the piano.

"Music is rather a bore--isn't it--after dinner this way," drawled Mrs. Hartington, noticing this fact.

"I don't think I agree with you. I'm fond of music," said Gerard, and after awhile he found an opportunity to saunter over to the piano, where Elizabeth sat playing, a little absently now, bits from Wagner. She started and looked up, blushing slightly, as Gerard asked her if she could play the Fire-music.

"I--it is a long time since I have tried it," she began, impelled by some vague instinct to refuse, and then she stopped, and almost unconsciously her fingers touched the keys, as she caught a look that seemed to compel obedience. He smiled.

"Please play it," he said, and though the tone was caressing, there lurked in it a half perceptible note of command. She felt it, as she began to play, and he stood listening, his grave eyes fixed upon her face. "A severe judge," she thought to herself with a proud little thrill of rebellion. And then, as she played on, she forgot this thought, and the fear of his criticism; forgot the strange room, and the strange people, and the fact that she was dining at the Van Antwerps'; forgot everything but the eyes fixed upon her, and played as she had never played before.

Elizabeth had always put the best of herself into her music, her finest qualities of brain and soul. But now she put into it something of which she before was hardly conscious, a force and depth and fire, which stirred inarticulately within her, and found expression in the throbbing Wagnerian chords. All the magic of the fairy spell thrilled beneath her touch, as it rose and fell and wove itself in and out amidst the clash of conflicting motives, while Brünnhilde sank ever deeper into slumber, and the flames leaped and danced and played about her sleeping form, and there lurked no premonition in her maiden dreams of that fatal, all-engrossing love, which was yet to awaken her from the serenity of oblivion. Then, as the rippling cadence died away, Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, striking furtive harmonies, till she passed at length into the poignant sweetness, the passionate self-surrender of the second act of Tristan, and so on to the Liebestod, with its swan-song of triumphant anguish, of love supreme even in death. With the last sobbing chord, Elizabeth's hands fell from the keys, and she sat staring straight before her, with eyes that were unusually large and dark.

"Upon my word she _can_ play," said Bobby Van Antwerp, and looked, for him, slightly stirred. "She has temperament," Mrs. Hartington coldly responded and again honored Elizabeth with a prolonged stare. "My dear child," exclaimed Elizabeth's hostess, "I had no idea you could play like that." The only person who said nothing was the man for whom she had played. He stood motionless by the piano, and his face was white and set. When the applause of the others had ceased, and Elizabeth, blushing now and smiling, looked up at him in involuntary surprise at his silence as if from a dream, he started and then, recovering himself, he spoke mechanically a few conventional words of thanks, and without comment on her performance, turned abruptly away.

Elizabeth still sat, a trifle dazed, at the piano, her hands tightly clasped in her lap. Her cheeks were burning painfully and she bit her lip to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. She seemed to have fallen suddenly from the clouds back to earth. After a moment she rose and went over to her hostess to say farewell.

"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't seen anything of you."

"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"--this was the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman--"will be furious if he is kept waiting."

She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placed her in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of seeing her again.

"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.

Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more passionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.

He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his den.

"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face, "well, Julian, what did you think of her?"

He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of--whom, Eleanor?" he asked.

"You know whom I mean--Elizabeth Van Vorst."

Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too much red in her hair."

"Too much red in her hair," Mrs. Bobby repeated blankly; then recovering herself: "But there isn't any, Julian, or very little. I call her hair golden, not red."

"Look at it in the fire-light," Gerard insisted imperturbably, "and you will see that it's a deep red."

"Well, and if it is," said Mrs. Bobby--"not that I admit for a moment that you are right--but if it is, red hair is all the fashion nowadays."

"No doubt," said Gerard. "It's a matter of taste. But for myself I never see a red-haired woman"--He stopped, but went on presently with an effort. "I never see a red-haired woman, that I don't instinctively avoid her. Yes, it's a--a superstition, if you will. I feel that she will be dangerous, somehow or another, perhaps to herself, and certainly to others." A note of unwonted feeling thrilled his voice. He broke off suddenly and stared again into the fire.

Mrs. Bobby sat and watched him in silence. "And so," she said to herself, "_that_ woman's hair was red."

"You see," said Gerard, presently, looking at her with a smile, "I've shown the confidence I repose in you by confessing my pet superstition. Miss Van Vorst's hair is not _very_ red, I admit, except in some lights, but still it's--it's red enough to be dangerous; and that fact, and certain other little things I've noticed about her, incline me to--to avoid her. She puzzles me; I can't quite make her out. Still, she is certainly a girl whom a great many men would--would admire. I'm no criterion, I believe."

"I hope not, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bobby, ruefully "for the sake of most of the women I know. My dear Julian, I despair of ever getting you married."

"My dear Eleanor, if you would only stop trying. Your efforts are, if you will excuse my saying so, a little too transparent. Do you suppose that I imagined this evening that your unpunctuality was entirely accidental?"

"Imagine what you will, you marvel of astuteness," said Eleanor, composedly. "I certainly did not intend to hurry down while I knew Elizabeth to be in such good hands, as I admit yours to be, in spite of certain faults which I hope marriage will improve. And that's why I don't relax my efforts, as you call them, while there is such a superfluity of nice girls in the world, and such an insufficiency of nice men to deserve them. But I'm disappointed about--about Elizabeth Van Vorst," she went on, musingly. "I thought--I don't know why, Julian--but I thought that you would like her."

Gerard started. "I never said that I--didn't like her," he observed.

"No, but your remarks seemed to point in that direction. Now I like her very much. Indeed, to return your confidence with another, Julian"--she looked up with a smile--"I was thinking, if Bobby approves, of asking her to spend the winter with me.

"I knew that," he returned, calmly, "and I approve of the plan highly. It will be a pleasant change for her, as she doesn't seem exactly satisfied with her surroundings; and for you it will be a--a"--he paused, apparently in search of an appropriate word--"an interesting study," he concluded.

She looked up in surprise. "A--a study," she repeated.

"Yes, a study--to see what a girl like that, with the somewhat odd antecedents that you told me about once, and some contradictory characteristics that I think she has--to see how she develops in the storm and stress of a New York season. I--I think you will find it quite interesting, Eleanor."

"I'm glad you think so," she returned, softly. "But--how about yourself, Julian? Couldn't you--just on general psychological principles--condescend to take an interest in it, too?"

A shadow fell on Gerard's face. "Oh, for myself," he said, carelessly, "I'm not easily interested in things nowadays, and above all not--thank Heaven! not in women." He paused. "All the same," he added, "you have the best wishes--for the success of your protégée." And with this he bade her good-night, and left her.

She sat for a long time without moving, and watched the fire flicker and die away.

"On the whole, I'm rather glad her hair is red--in certain lights at least," she observed at last, apparently to the smouldering embers. "It--it makes the study still more interesting."

_Chapter XV_

When Eleanor Van Antwerp had uttered the words "If Bobby approves," she had given voice to a purely conventional formula; for when, in the eight years of their married life, had Bobby not approved of anything that she might chance to desire? She did not suppose for a moment that he would object to her asking Elizabeth Van Vorst, or any one under the sun, to spend the winter, and when, the next morning, she paid him a visit in his den, where he was supposed to be transacting important business, and proved to be enjoying a novel and a cigar, she was still, as she asked his permission to carry out her new plan, merely paying a graceful concession to the perfunctory and outworn theory of his supremacy. Bobby listened placidly, puffing at his cigar, his clear-cut, clean-shaven profile, outlined against the window-pane seeming absolutely impassive in the gray light of the autumn day. But when she concluded, and was waiting, all aglow with her own enthusiasm, for his answer, he turned his blue eyes towards her with an unusually thoughtful look.

"Well," she said, impatiently, as he still declined to commit himself, "what do you think?"

"What do I think," he repeated, slowly, "of your asking Elizabeth Van Vorst to spend the winter?"

"Why, yes, I don't want to do it, dear, of course, unless you approve."

"Well, then," said Bobby, calmly, "if you ask my candid opinion, I think it would be a mistake. I--I'd rather you didn't Eleanor, really I would."

"Bobby," Eleanor Van Antwerp stared at her husband in incredulous amazement. "Bobby, you don't mean to say that you don't want me to ask her?"

"That's about it." Bobby paused and reflectively knocked the ashes from his cigar. "You see," he went on, argumentatively "this is the way I look at it. The girl is good-looking, and all that, and it's very nice for you to see something of her up here, and I'm only too glad, for it's awfully sweet of you, darling, to come here on my account, and I've always been sorry that there wasn't some woman whom you could be friends with. But to ask a girl to spend the winter, and introduce her to people, is--is a responsibility; and if you want to ask any one--why, I'd rather it were some girl whom I know all about--that's all."

It was not often that Bobby made such a long speech. His wife could hardly hear him to the end of it. "But, my dear Bobby" she exclaimed, breaking in upon his last words, "you know all about Elizabeth Van Vorst!"

"Do I," said Bobby, quietly. "I know that her father was a fool, and that her mother was--worse. Perhaps it would be better if I didn't know quite so much, Eleanor."

"For Heaven's sake, don't harp on what happened centuries ago," cried Mrs. Bobby, who had not been born in the neighborhood. "I've always thought it a shame the way people here snub that poor girl. People can't help what their fathers and mothers were like. If mine were fairly respectable, I'm sure it's no credit to me."

"None at all," Bobby assented, "but still you'd feel rather badly if they were not. It's a natural feeling, Eleanor. I'm not a crank about family, but on general principles, I think a girl whose mother was a lady is more apt to behave herself than one whose mother was--well, quite the reverse."

"And on general principles," said Eleanor, quickly "I agree with you, but I think Elizabeth Van Vorst the exception that proves the rule."

"Then I would rather," said Bobby, tranquilly, "that it were proved under some one else's auspices than yours."

"But that doesn't seem likely, under the circumstances," exclaimed his wife, impatiently. "Really, Bobby, you disappoint me. I never supposed you had such narrow-minded ideas. The girl has been very well brought up by those dear old aunts, and she is perfectly well-bred. And I'm sure there is plenty of good blood in the family as well as bad. The Schuyler Van Vorsts are their cousins, and lots of old Dutch families. I dare say, if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related to them, too."

"I dare say," said Bobby, resignedly, "if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related to a lot of queer people. But we don't, thank Heaven! have to ask them to visit us."

"Ah, well, I see you are hopelessly opposed to my plan," said Mrs. Bobby, changing her tactics, "and of course, dear, as I told you before, I wouldn't think of asking any one unless you approve."

"Oh, I don't really care," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback by this sudden surrender. "Ask any one you please. You know I never interfere with your plans. Only don't blame me if they turn out badly--that's all."

"Ah, but they never do," cried Mrs. Bobby, "at least this one won't, I'm sure. I really have set my heart on it, Bobby," she went on, pleadingly. "The truth is, though I don't often speak of it, going out has been a weariness, and that big house in town seems horribly empty since--since the baby died." Her lip trembled and she paused for a moment, while Bobby turned and stared fixedly out of the window at the brilliantly-tinted leaves that a chill east wind was whirling inexorably to the ground. "I thought," she went on presently, in a voice that was not quite steady, "that if I had some one with me to make the house seem a little brighter--some young girl whom I could take with me on the same old round that I'm so sick of--why, I could look at life through her eyes, and it would seem more worth while. But of course Bobby," she concluded, earnestly, "I wouldn't for the world do anything to which you really object."

"My dear Eleanor," said Bobby, turning round at this and speaking for him quite solemnly. "You know I don't object to anything in the world that could make you happy."

And so Mrs. Bobby had her own way.

It was on Saturday that this conversation took place; and on Sunday afternoon they all walked over to the Homestead--Mrs. Bobby, her husband and Gerard. Elizabeth had been prepared for their coming, by a whisper from Mrs. Bobby after church; and tea was all ready for them with Miss Joanna's cakes, and a fire that was welcome after the cold out-doors, where the bleak east wind was still robbing the trees of their glory and ushering in prematurely the dull grayness of November. Mrs. Bobby was not satisfied till she could draw Elizabeth to a distant sofa, and deliver the invitation which she felt, in her impetuous fashion, she could not withhold for another day.

But though the first of Elizabeth's wishes was thus fulfilled with a promptness most unusual outside of fairy tales, she did not accept with the enthusiasm that might have been expected. For a moment, indeed, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed with delight. And then of a sudden the color faded, her eyes fell, she shrank back as if frightened at the idea.

"I--I--it's awfully sweet of you, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, low and hurriedly, "but I--I can't go--I wish I could, but I can't. Don't--don't ask me." It was almost as if she had said, "Don't tempt me." Poor Mrs. Bobby, whose intentions were so good, was exceedingly puzzled and not a little piqued.

"Oh, well, if you don't care to come," she said, coldly, in the great-lady manner which she seldom assumed, "of course I shall not urge you. I shouldn't have mentioned the subject, if I had not thought from what you said the other day, that you were really anxious to come to town."

"So I was, so I am--for some reasons; but for others--Dear Mrs. Van Antwerp," the girl pleaded, "don't think me ungrateful. I should love to come beyond anything, but--but I can't. It doesn't seem right," she added, more firmly.

"Doesn't seem right," repeated Mrs. Bobby, wondering, "You mean on your aunts' account. You think it wouldn't be right to leave them?"

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, as if relieved at being furnished with an excuse of some sort, however feeble, "I don't think it would be right to leave them."

"But that is nonsense," cried Mrs. Bobby. "They will miss you terribly, of course, but it will be no worse than when you were at school, and they would be the first to wish you to go, I'm sure."

Elizabeth was quite sure of it, too. Mrs. Bobby, reading this conviction in her eyes, and all the more anxious for the success of her plan, now that it met with so many unexpected obstacles, went on to expatiate on the delights of a season in town, and all the possibilities that life can offer, to one who has youth, talent and beauty. Elizabeth listened eagerly with dilating eyes, which she only once withdrew from Mrs. Bobby's face, to glance across to the other end of the room, where Mr. Gerard was leaning forward in an attitude of respectful interest, as he talked to Miss Cornelia. For a moment Elizabeth's eyes rested, half absently perhaps, on the strong lines of his face, while the irrelevant thought passed through her mind: "I wonder what he would think." Then, quick as lightning, the answer followed. "I don't care," she said, under her breath, and drew herself up with a little flash of defiance.

She turned towards Mrs. Bobby. "Do you really want me?" she asked, caressingly.

"Should I have asked you, if I didn't," laughed Mrs. Bobby, triumphant, as she saw that victory was hers.

Elizabeth told the news to her aunts as soon as the visitors had left. Their delight was what she had expected. They were eager in approving her decision, and in assuring her that she should have all the pretty gowns that the occasion required, sustained by the conviction, which occurred simultaneously to the minds of both, that their old black silks, which they had foolishly thought of as shabby, would do admirably another winter. It would be the height of extravagance, as Miss Cornelia afterwards observed to replace them.

"It's just what we have always wished for you," she cried, her little curls all a'flutter with joyful excitement, "and so unexpected--quite like a fairy-tale."

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, "quite like a fairy-tale. There's only one difference," she added to herself, as she left the room, "from every well-regulated fairy-tale that I ever heard of. The fairy Godmother, coach and four, are just a little--too late."

_Chapter XVI_

"My dear Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, "I regret to say it, but you really are growing terribly spoiled."

The winter was far advanced when Mrs. Bobby made this remark. With Lent growing every day nearer, the whirl of gaiety grew ever faster and more furious. It was not often that Mrs. Bobby and her guest had an opportunity for private conversation. But to-night, as it happened, they had merely been out to dinner, and having returned at an unusually early hour, Elizabeth came into Mrs. Bobby's boudoir in her long white dressing-gown, and sat brushing out her masses of wavy hair, while she and her hostess discussed the evening's entertainment, and other recent events of interest.

Mrs. Bobby's eyes rested upon Elizabeth with all the satisfaction with which a connoisseur regards some beautiful object of which he has been the discoverer. Elizabeth's beauty, Elizabeth's conquests, formed to Mrs. Bobby just then a theme of which she never tired. Nor did she fail to make them the text for various sermons that she delivered to Bobby about this time, on the subject of her own wisdom, and his utter failure as a prophet.

"Confess, Bobby, that my plans turn out well," she would say, "and that I'm not such a fool as you thought me."

"Why, I never," Bobby would protest, "thought you anything of the kind." But she would go on unheeding:

"It would have been a shame for that girl to be buried in the country, and I do take some credit to myself for having rescued her from such a fate. But after that, all the credit is due to Elizabeth. I did what I could, of course, to launch her successfully, but when all is said and done, a girl has to sink or swim on her own merits. Elizabeth takes to society as a duck does to water; it's her natural element. And talk of heredity! There are not many girls with the most aristocratic mothers who can come into a room with the air that she has, as if she didn't care two straws whether any one spoke to her or not, and then of course every one does. Now explain to me, Bobby, if you can, where the girl gets that air."

"I suppose," said Bobby, "if I believed implicitly in heredity (which I am not at all sure that I do) I'd account for it by your own remark that she has plenty of good blood as well as bad."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, incredulously, "you can always make a theory fit in somehow."

But though Mrs. Bobby exulted in that air of indifference with which Elizabeth accepted, as if it were a mere matter of course, all the devotion offered up at her feet, she was beginning to realize that the most admirable qualities can be carried too far. And thus it was that she upbraided her this evening with being unreasonably spoiled, and not sufficiently appreciating the good things which had fallen to her lot.

"I don't know what you want me to do," Elizabeth said, quietly, when she had listened for some moments to this rather vague accusation. "I'm sure I go everywhere that I'm asked, and that, you must admit, is saying a good deal; I talk to all the men who talk to me, and that again you must admit, means a great deal of conversational effort; and--and I make no distinctions between them whatever, and do my duty on all occasions. I really don't know what more you can expect."

"But that," exclaimed her hostess, "is exactly what I complain of. You go everywhere you are asked--yes, and you never express a preference for any particular place; you talk to the men who talk to you, and you make no distinctions--no, for apparently it's all the same to you, whether it's this man or the other."

"Not quite," said Elizabeth, placidly, "for one man amuses me and another doesn't. But beyond that, I don't--thank Heaven! I don't care." She broke off suddenly, and she drew her comb with unwonted vehemence through her hair.

"I don't know why you should thank Heaven," said Mrs. Bobby, watching her narrowly, "for a fact that is quite abnormal in a girl of your age, who has some of the nicest men in town in love with her. There are times when I think you are quite heartless, and yet--with that hair, and those eyes, and the way you throw yourself into your music, you seem to have abundance of temperament. On the whole, Elizabeth, you are a puzzling combination. What was it Mr. D'Hauteville said of you--that you reminded him of a lake of ice in a circle of fire?"

"Mr. D'Hauteville," said Elizabeth, yawning, "is fond of glittering similes. This one sounds well, but doesn't bear close consideration. The fire, I should think, under the circumstances, would dissolve the ice."

"Perhaps it will," said Mrs. Bobby, "when the right time comes."

"Which will be never," said Elizabeth, with decision. Her hostess smiled as one who has heard such things said before.

"After all," she resumed, after a pause, returning to the grievance which had first started the conversation, "I could forgive you everything else, but this indifference about your picture. One would think that when a great artist asks as a special favor to paint your portrait, you might at least have the decency to go to look at it, when it is on exhibition, and all New York is talking about it."

"That's the very reason," said Elizabeth, "why it strikes me as rather bad taste for me to stand in rapt contemplation before it, while a lot of people are jostling me, and making remarks about my eyes, and hair, and mouth, as if it were I on exhibition, and not Mr. ----'s picture."

"Well, it _is_ you whom they want to see," said Mrs. Bobby. "The New York public doesn't care much for art, but it does take an interest in the people whom it reads about in the papers--a weakness that we needn't quarrel with, since it has made the Portrait Show a success, and given us so many thousands for our hospital."

"Well, at least," said Elizabeth, "I have done my duty in contributing my portrait to the good cause; so don't ask me to be present in actual flesh and blood, and above all not to face such a crowd as there was the other day, when we tried to look at it and my gown was nearly torn off my back in the process."

"You could go early," suggested Mrs. Bobby, "as I did the other day. You have no idea how much better it looks in that light than it did at the studio."

"I am very tired of it, in any light," said Elizabeth. "People have talked to me so much about it. But, if you insist upon it I will go--I will go early. There are some of the other portraits too that I should like to look at, if I can do so in peace." And with this concession, the conversation was allowed to drop for a moment.

It was Elizabeth who resumed it, speaking slowly and tentatively, with many lapses, and eyes carefully turned away from her friend. "You talk," she said, "a great deal of my successes, and I suppose, in a way, I ought to be--satisfied. And of course I am," she added, hastily. "People have been very nice to me. I--I couldn't ask for anything more. And yet--there is one person--I don't know if you have noticed it--one person with whom I am a distinct failure, who I think almost dislikes me, and that is--your friend Mr. Gerard."

"What, Julian," said Mrs. Bobby, in a tone that was absolutely devoid of expression. "You think he--doesn't like you?"

"I am quite sure of it," said Elizabeth.

"But why," questioned Mrs. Bobby, in apparent bewilderment. "What reason have you for thinking so?"

"A great many, but any one of them would be enough. To begin with, he never speaks to me if he can possibly help himself. His avoidance of me is quite pointed--you surely must have noticed it?" She fixed her eyes anxiously upon Mrs. Bobby.

"I"--Mrs. Bobby checked the impulsive words that rose to her lips. "Julian is--is very peculiar," she said in a non-committal tone. "I don't think he cares for women."

"Perhaps not; but still I have seen him talk to them--in a bored sort of way, it is true. But to me he never talks, in any way whatsoever."

"He never has a chance. You are always surrounded."

"He would have the same chance as the others. No, it isn't that. He disapproves of me; I can feel it, as he looks at me through those dark, half-shut eyes of his, and it gives me an uncomfortable sense of wickedness. He thinks me flippant, and vain, and frivolous, and I am when he is there, or I seem so. When he is listening, I say all the horrid, cynical, heartless things I can think of. I have to say them, somehow. It is fate. It began the first night that I met him--it was in the country, do you remember?" She paused and again looked questioningly at Mrs. Bobby.

"Yes," the latter answered softly, "I remember."

"I was rather excited that night--it was the first time I had ever been out to dinner. I talked in a flippant sort of way about hating the country, and longing to go out, and wanting to be always amused. It was very _young_, I suppose." Elizabeth spoke with all the superiority of a girl half-way through her first season towards her more unsophisticated self of a few months before. "He didn't like it. The sort of woman whom he admires knows her catechism, and is satisfied with that situation in life where it has pleased Providence to place her. I shocked him; he has never got over it. He showed me, that very evening, how he disliked me--it was so pointed that it was almost rude. You asked me--do you remember? to play." She stopped.

"I remember," said Mrs. Bobby again softly. "I never heard you play so well."

"I never have--since. I seemed to have, just for the moment, some strange power over the keys--such feelings come to one, you know, sometimes. And then, when I stopped--he had asked me for the Fire-music--I felt, somehow, that he was fond of music--he _is_ fond of it, passionately fond--but when I stopped, he looked at me blankly for a moment, till he suddenly remembered what was expected of him, and thanked me in a cold sort of way and walked off. And--I shouldn't think so much of that; but since then he has never--never once asked me to play, though he has often heard other people ask me."

"I have noticed," said Mrs. Bobby, quietly, "that you will never play when he is in the room."

"I couldn't," said Elizabeth, "it would have such a dampening effect to feel that there was one person in the room who disliked it, who, no matter how well I played, would always preserve his critical attitude.

"You see that I am reduced to the unflattering alternative that it is myself that he objects to or my playing. But it is the same with everything. There is my picture, for instance. He is the only person I know who has said nothing to me about it, has probably not even seen it."

"That must be rather a relief," said Mrs. Bobby, placidly, "since you are so tired of the subject."

"If I am," said Elizabeth, "that is no reason why he shouldn't go through the conventional formula of telling me that he has seen the picture, and adding something civil about it, as the most ordinary acquaintances never fail to do."

"No, of course," Mrs. Bobby agreed softly, "the most ordinary acquaintances never would. But perhaps he doesn't consider himself exactly that."

"Whatever he considers himself," said Elizabeth, with some heat, "he is not exempt from the common rules of civility. But I suppose he doesn't really admire the picture, and is too painfully truthful to pretend to the contrary." And then she stopped and laughed a little at her own vehemence, but without much spirit. "It really is very illogical," she admitted, "I don't care for Mr. Gerard's admiration, it would probably bore me extremely to have it; and yet--it's not pleasant to be so absolutely--ignored."

Mrs. Bobby was watching her with an odd little gleam in the dark eyes that were almost hidden by her long, curling lashes. "I will tell you," she said, "what it is that he doesn't like. It isn't you, or your playing, or your conversation; it's your hair."

"My hair!" Elizabeth took up mechanically one of her long shining locks and passed it through her fingers. "I may have been inordinately vain," she remarked after a pause, "but I never supposed before that there was much the matter with my hair."

"Nor would most people, I imagine. But he has some odd ideas, and among them, it seems, is a prejudice--a superstition, as he calls it--against red hair."

"But mine isn't red," said Elizabeth, quickly.

"Of course not," said Mrs. Bobby. "He is color blind, as I told him. But there's no use in arguing the point with him. He insists that your hair is red enough to--to be dangerous--those are his words, and he avoids you in consequence. He has had some unfortunate experience in the past, I should imagine, which has given him this prejudice. There, my dear, I shouldn't have told you," Mrs. Bobby went on, leaning back in her chair, and still watching Elizabeth narrowly through half-closed lids, "if I didn't know, of course, that it can make no real difference to you what Julian thinks."

"Of course not," Elizabeth made answer mechanically with dry lips, as she still drew her comb absently through the offending hair.

"You have so many admirers," Mrs. Bobby continued serenely, "it can't matter very much that one person should hold aloof. And then I shouldn't care about Julian's opinion, for he never admires any woman. Ever since that unfortunate experience, which happened, I think, when he was very young, he has been a confirmed cynic, avoiding all young girls, and horribly afraid of being married for his money. I really despair now of his ever falling in love; I have talked up almost every girl in town to him, and all in vain. No, even you, Elizabeth, spoiled as you are, couldn't expect to make a conquest of Julian."

"I don't know what I should expect," said Elizabeth, rather coldly, "but I certainly don't wish to. It would hardly be worth while." She rose, with one long look in the glass, and moved wearily towards the door. "I am so very tired, dear," she said. "I think I will say good-night."

"Good-night," said Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. "Sleep well--you need to--and don't waste another thought on that tiresome creature, Julian."

"Oh, I'm not likely to," Elizabeth responded, with rather a pale smile. "I'm much too tired."

And yet she did think of him more than once, as she stood before her mirror, arranging her hair into two heavy braids, which reached below her waist, and repeating to herself that, as Mrs. Bobby had said, it could matter little about the one dissenting voice in the general chorus of admiration which had attended her triumphant career. In spite of which assurance, her last thoughts as she fell asleep might have been somewhat surprising to those who, having watched that career entirely from the outside, regarded her as the most fortunate being in the world.

Elizabeth's aunts were on the whole, more to be envied than the girl herself that winter. There was no alloy in their happiness, no under-current of dissatisfaction, even though they wore their old black silks, and Miss Joanna's friend, the butcher, was heard to complain somewhat bitterly of her sudden parsimony in regard to joints of meat. What did it matter? They would have dressed cheerfully in sackcloth and lived on bread and water, for the sake of such glowing accounts of Elizabeth's triumphs as Mrs. Bobby constantly transmitted, or of the girl's own brilliant letters which seemed to breathe the radiant satisfaction of a mind without a care.

Elizabeth's aunt at Bassett Mills also watched her career, which was chronicled at that time in the papers. Poor Aunt Rebecca, after a hard day's work, reading her niece's name, and possibly a description of her costume in the list of guests at some smart festivity, would look up, awe-struck, at Amanda. "Only to think," she would say, with the old contradictory note, half pride, half jealousy "to think that it should be Malvina's girl!"

But Amanda, still pale and wasted from the fever with her hair quite long and very soft and wavy, would give an odd, furtive look from her light eyes and say nothing.

_Chapter XVII_

It was early at the Portrait Show. It was so early that what few people were already there had the place practically to themselves. There were only three or four in the large room at the head of the stairs, which at a later hour of the afternoon was invariably crowded, and where was hung that picture which had attracted so much attention, partly from the great fame of the artist, still more, perhaps, from the beauty of the subject.

A young girl in a long, white gown of some soft, clinging stuff, stood against the background of a dark green velvet curtain. There was no relief to the dead whiteness of the gown, and the roses that she held were white; all that brilliancy of color, for which this great artist is famous, he had expended upon the deep red-gold tints of the hair, the vivid scarlet of the lips, the warm creamy tones of the skin, as they were thrown into full relief by the dark background. The painter had lingered, with all the skill at his command, on the rounded, dimpled curves of the neck and arms, nor had he forgotten the haughty little turn of the head, which gave a characteristic touch to the picture. Seen at a glance, it was aglow with life and color, very human, very mundane, the embodiment of health and bloom. A study in flesh-tints, one critic had carelessly pronounced it, and nothing more. It was only when you looked at the eyes that you caught a discordant note, which, if you dwelt upon it, contradicted the joyous effect of the rest; a look, a latent shadow which the great artist had either surprised or imagined, and transferred perhaps unconsciously to his canvas, where, if you saw it at all, it held you with a haunting sense of mystery, the fascination of an unsolved problem. "What does it mean," a man said to himself that afternoon, "and did ---- really put it in, or do I, with my usual superstition, imagine it? Am I the only person who sees it, or do others?"

Two young girls, who jostled up against him just then evidently did not.

"Portrait of Miss Van Vorst," said one, reading from her catalogue, "by ----." She passed the artist's name without recognition, as she delightedly pressed her companion's arm. "Say, Mamie, that's Elizabeth Van Vorst, you know, the beauty. I've seen lots about her in the papers."

"You don't say so?" returned the other, who was apparently less up-to-date. "I thought she must be one of the swells, but I didn't know the name. She's pretty isn't she?--but doesn't her nose turn up too much?--and I don't think much of her dress, it's so kind of simple."

The man who had been standing when they came up in front of the picture, turned frowning aside, and found himself face to face with the original. For an instant each stared at the other in silence, and it might have been noticed by a careful observer that the man was at once the more disconcerted and the less surprised of the two.

"So I see you have achieved fame," he said, recovering himself almost immediately and smiling, as he glanced at the two girls who were still criticizing Elizabeth's features, all unconscious that the subject of their remarks was within hearing.

"Yes, fame," she returned, lightly "of a kind that you despise." She, too, was quite herself again--that flippant, frivolous self, at least, which he had always the power to awaken.

"I suppose I'm a crank," he admitted. "I really don't like to hear my friends talked about, by their first name by people who have read about them in the papers."

"Oh, that," she said, carelessly "is a necessary penalty of fame."

"Which you share with a variety actress," he returned. "I realize more and more that I'm hopelessly behind the age. Look at those two girls," he went on, glancing at them with some animosity.

"They have spent, I should imagine, their little all on the admission fee and the catalogue; they don't care two straws for the portraits as portraits, and they have never spoken to the originals, but they are wildly interested in them because they represent to them the magic word 'society,' and they will go away and talk about them as if they knew them intimately."

Elizabeth laughed softly. "Ah," she said "let them be. They're getting their money's worth; don't grudge it to them. So far as I'm concerned, they may pull my face to pieces as much as they please. I know how it is--I've stood on the outside, too, of a thing, and tried to imagine that I was in it."

"Do you think they'd be happier," asked Gerard, "if they were?"

"Ah, that depends," she returned, oracularly, stroking down the long fur of her muff.

"Tell me how you find it yourself," said Gerard. He looked about the room. "The place is comfortably empty," he said. "Have you been around yet, or would you--a--like to sit down awhile?"

She hesitated. "I have been in several of the rooms," she said. "I came early on purpose. Eleanor is lunching somewhere, but she is to meet me here at three."

"Then suppose you--a--rest till she comes?" he suggested, as he led the way to a sofa which had been placed for the accommodation of weary sight-seers in the centre of the room. "It's a long while since I've had a talk with you. ('And whose fault is that,' thought Elizabeth.) This isn't a bad place to talk in, and if you've been around once, you've had enough of it for the time being."

"I am glad to rest for a few minutes," Elizabeth admitted.

She threw open the revers of her coat, and sank back in her seat as if physically tired. Gerard looked at her. She was exquisitely dressed. Her dark green velvet and furs set off the fairness of her skin, her large feathered hat suited her picturesque style. The subtle atmosphere of fashion, of distinction, lurked in every fold of her gown, in every movement and gesture. Three months had sufficed to endow her with it. They had also sufficed--or was this again the result of his imagination?--to take away the first freshness of her beauty. She looked brilliant, but a trifle worn; her color had faded, there were lines of weariness about the mouth, and deep black rings under the eyes.

"You don't look well," he said, abruptly. She smiled. ("I might have known that he would say that," she said to herself.)

"I know it," she returned, quietly. "The maid woke me up, as she generally does, with strong coffee. I refused at first to be waked. I haven't been to bed at a reasonable hour for weeks, and I'm so countrified that I show the ill effects of it."

"You shouldn't go out so much," said Gerard. "What is Eleanor thinking of that she allows it? You--you will be ill if this keeps up." He spoke almost angrily.

"Yet what difference would it make to him?" thought Elizabeth. "He is very unaccountable. Why should he look at my picture, thinking no doubt all the time how ugly my hair is? I don't want his advice--I won't have it. Oh, it's all in a good cause," she said lightly, aloud. "I complain sometimes, but I wouldn't stay at home, really, for the world. It's all too delightful. I may be tired, but at least I'm not bored."

"It has all come up to your expectations, then?" said Gerard. "You like it better than--a--the river view?"

"Ah, if you had looked at that view as many years as I have, you wouldn't need to ask the question."

"And you are always amused?" he went on. "That was the next wish, wasn't it? You see I'm putting you through the category, as I threatened to do once, and I expect only the truth for an answer. Are you always, every day and all day long, thoroughly amused?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly. "Don't I--seem to be?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I've wondered--sometimes. You certainly ought to be," he declared.

"Then," she said "you may take it for granted that I am."

"And the third wish," he said, musingly, "follows naturally on the other. You never, in this whirl of gaiety--never, I suppose, get a chance to think?"

"Not a moment," she returned, triumphantly. "All my time is occupied, I'm glad to say, in being amused. That's hard work, too, sometimes, but then--the game is worth the candle."

"Well," he said "you are, I admit, a very fortunate young woman, and you have my congratulations. There are not many people whose wishes are fulfilled, as quickly and absolutely as yours have been."