Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/375

 Sudds. " Could you fix a place for him to cat? The train bein' late like this, he won't git any supper otherwise. I wasn't expectin' of him for a month yet."

With an invitation thus publicly requisitioned, as it were, there was no alternative but to assent.

The hands of the office clock were close to eight when, as though on a signal, the hubbub of social intercourse ceased and eyes followed eyes to the top of the stairs where two white-slippered feet showed through the rungs of the balustrade and a slim hand sparkling with jewels slipped gracefully along the polished rail. Then she appeared full length, in a white dinner gown — clinging, soft, exquisite in its simplicity and the perfection of its lines. With pearls in her ears and about her throat, her hair drawn back in a simple knot, Kate looked like one of the favorites of fortune of whom the Proutyites read in the illustrated magazines and Sunday supplements. The least initiated was conscious of the perfect taste and skilful workmanship which had conspired to produce this result. Kate descended slowly, with neither undue deliberation nor haste, upon her lips the faint one-sided smile which was characteristic.

The moment was as dramatic as if the situation had been planned for the effect, since there were few present to whose minds did not leap the picture of that other girl who had come bounding down the stairs, grotesque of dress and as assured and joyous in her ignorance as a frisky colt.

In a continued silence which no one seemed to have the temerity or the presence of mind to break, the Sheep Queen turned at the foot of the stairway, and the various groups separated on a common impulse to let her pass. She went straight to Prentiss, whose greeting was a smile of adoring tenderness.