Mrs. Conyers arrived early, leaning on the arm of her grandson,
Victor Fielding. To-night she was ennobled with jewels--the old
family jewels of her last husband's family, not of her own.
When the three Marguerites beheld her, a shadow fell on their
faces. The change was like the assumption of a mask behind which
they could efface themselves as ladies and receive as hostesses.
While she lingered, they forebore even to exchange glances lest
feelings injurious to a guest should be thus revealed: so pure in
them was the strain of courtesy that went with proffered
hospitality. (They were not of the kind who invite you to their
houses and having you thus in their power try to pierce you with
little insults which they would never dare offer openly in the
street: verbal Borgias at their own tables and firesides.) The
moment she left them, the three faces became effulgent again.
A little later, strolling across the rooms toward them alone, came
Judge Morris, a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked
from one of Marguerite's plants. The paraffin starch on his shirt
front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and
consistency of celluloid--it being the intention of his old
laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished
gentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon on
kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that
the happier it seemed, the sadder it was to look at: as though all
his virtues only framed his great wrong; so that the more clearly
you beheld the bright frame, the more deeply you felt the dark
picture.
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