Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/283

Rh "Has any one seen Silvia yet? I suppose she will be in something wonderful."

"Was Silvia Fleming ever known to waste her sweetness on the desert air?" says Alice, seating herself. "When the company is assembled, and the music strikes up, she will appear, not before!"

"I do wish Fane would come down," says Milly, who is arranged in the expectant attitude of a hostess, on a high and ample crimson velvet chair, that to the vulgar eye bears a wonderful resemblance to a throne. "He always behaves in this way: it is too bad."

Like other women, Milly likes to be supported when she is receiving her guests; but Fane, doting lover and obedient spouse that he is, distinctly objects to the process of standing still and saying, "How do you do?" for an hour at a stretch, and when it is his plain and bounden duty so to do—makes himself scarce. Here come the Listers! Lister mère in a low (save the mark!) black velvet, with uncommonly fine diamonds resting on her withered, brown, fleshless old collar-bones. I suppose mahogany is a better foil to the precious stones than alabaster, since it is so much oftener seen. Her daughters wear apple-green silk and apple-blossom flowers, harrowing contrast! and the eye aches as it rests on the inharmonious whole. Will our matrons and maids ever, I wonder, learn to drape their garments, following the lines of the figure as a sallow Frenchwoman does, instead of breaking out all over in angles, tags, bumps, and excrescences?

A confused sound in the distance heralds an arrival.

"Nell," says Milly, hastily, "will you find Fane, and make him come here at once?"

Rather a difficult matter that; I set out, however, with a bold front, and a regret that I have not been able after all to see the first people walk in Ascending the stairs, I hear cackles and sounds of merriment above me. Looking up, I discover Fane and