At balls and receptions she wore gowns
of an austere but expensive simplicity, and as the simple jewels of her
inheritance looked pathetic beside the blazing necklaces and sunbursts
(there were only two or three tiaras in San Francisco) of those new people
whom she both deplored and envied, she wore none; and she was assured that
the lack added to the distinction of her appearance.
But although she felt it almost a religious duty to be smart, determined
as she was that the plutocracy should never, while she was alive, push the
aristocracy through, the wall and out of sight, she was a strict conformer
to the old tradition that had looked upon all arts to enhance and preserve
youth as the converse of respectable. Her once delicate pink and white skin
was wrinkled and weather-beaten, her nose had never known powder; but even
in the glare of the fire her skin looked cool and pale, for the heat had
not crimsoned her. Her blood was rather thin and she prided herself
upon the fact. She may have lost her early beauty, but she looked the
indubitable aristocrat, the lady born, as her more naive grandmothers would
have phrased it.
It sufficed.
III
By those that did not have the privilege of her intimate acquaintance she
was called "stuck-up," "a snob," a mid-victorian who ought to dress like
her more consistent mother, "rather a fool, if the truth were known, no
doubt.
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