I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at
half past seven.
Most sincerely yours,
MAUDE LANIER.
She had sent a messenger boy with her acceptance, because she knew that
that was what Denis would have wished; but she couldn’t make the best of
it, couldn’t recapture the smiling, careless bravery that Denis so loved
in her. She had had courage enough to leave her dear, shabby old home at
eighteen and go off to try her luck in the wide world. She had been able
to give Denis the most gallant, bright farewell. She had faced more than
one black moment in her twenty years, but she could not face Denis’s
family untroubled.
She had given herself two hours to dress in, and she needed every second
of the time. Her prettiness seemed to ebb away with every breath she
drew. That radiant hair was an unruly tangle when she tried to put it
up. The brightness fled from her face, leaving it pale and strained. The
dark dress that Denis had admired so much was admirable no longer, but
austerely plain and grievously unbecoming. Emily could have wept at her
own image in the mirror.
“I look so--so mean!” she cried, with a sob. “Such a meek, scared, silly
little object!”
This wouldn’t do. The thing that the serious Denis had loved best of all
in her was her absurd, delightful gayety. She straightened her shoulders
and drew a long breath.
“You know,” she said to her own reflection, “Denis picked _you_ out from
all the other girls in the world, and now you’ve simply got to show the
reason why. Even if you’re hideous, you needn’t be dismal. Here goes!”
So she managed a smile, after all.
She had been Mrs. Denis Lanier for only five weeks, had had a check book
and money to spend for the same short time, and it was still a little
intoxicating. She ordered a taxi from her room by telephone, and when it
was announced she went down into the lobby almost her own debonair self
again. Think of Mrs. Denis Lanier, in a fur coat and a pearl necklace,
getting into her taxi!
Her father was a professor in a small New England college, and Emily had
been brought up with a full understanding of the woeful discrepancy
between the tastes and the incomes of professors and their families. She
had learned to be happy without any of the things for which her young
heart thirsted. It was the very essence of her nature to be happy; but
it cannot be denied that she was a hundred times more happy now that she
possessed some share of worldly goods. She wished and tried to be
high-minded, and still she couldn’t forget her pearl necklace.