Part 48 (1/2)
She was looking smilingly straight into the blue eyes.
”No--oh, no!” said the girl hastily. ”How can you think that, Mrs.
Dysart?”
”Then I don't think it,” replied Rosalie, laughing. ”You are a trifle pale, dear. Touch up your lips a bit. It's very Louis XVI. See mine?...
Will you kiss me, Sylvia?”
Again a strange look flickered in the girl's eyes; Rosalie kissed her gently; she had turned very white.
”What is your costume?” asked Mrs. Dysart.
”Flame colour and gold.”
”h.e.l.l's own combination, dear,” laughed Rosalie. ”You will make an exquisite little demon shepherdess.”
And she went on, smiling back at the girl in friendly fas.h.i.+on, then turned and lightly descended the stairway, snapping on her loup-mask before the jolly crowd below could identify her.
Masked figures here and there detained her, addressing her in disguised voices, but she eluded them, slipped through the throngs on terrace and lawn, ran down the western slope and entered the rose-garden. A man in mask and violet-gray court costume rose from a marble seat under the pergola and advanced toward her, the palm of his left hand carelessly balanced on his gilded hilt.
”So you did get my note, Duane?” she said, laying her pretty hand on his arm.
”I certainly did. What can I do for you, Rosalie?”
”I don't know. Shall we sit here a moment?”
He laughed, but continued standing after she was seated.
The air was heavy with the scent of rockets and phlox and ragged pinks and candy-tuft. Through the sweet-scented dusky silence some small and very wakeful bird was trilling. Great misty-winged moths came whirring and hovering among the blossoms, pale blurs in the darkness, and everywhere the drifting lamps of fireflies lighted and died out against the foliage.
The woman beside him sat with masked head bent and slightly turned from him; her restless hands worried her fan; her satin-shod feet were crossed and recrossed.
”What is the matter?” he asked.
”Life. It's all so very wrong.”
”Oh,” he said, smiling, ”so it's life that is amiss, not we!”
”I suppose we are.... I suppose I am. But, Duane”--she turned and looked at him--”I haven't had much of a chance yet--to go very right or very wrong.”
”You've had chances enough for the latter,” he said with an unpleasant laugh. ”In this sweet coterie we inhabit, there's always that chance.”
”There are good women in it, good wives. Your sister is in it.”
”Yes, and I mean to take her out,” said Duane grimly. ”Do you think I want Nada to marry some money-fattened pup in this set?”
”Where can you take her?”
”Where I'm going in future myself--among people whose brains are not as obsolete as my appendix; where there still exist standards and old-fas.h.i.+oned things like principles and religion, and a healthy terror of the Decalogue!”
”Is anybody really still afraid of the Decalogue?” she asked curiously.