Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/258

 looked like a bluebird. Cornelia, as I had known her, had at least three principal moods: her winter mood, in which she was His Excellency's hostess, and the note was a quite mature graciousness; her summer mood, in which she was the children's mother, and the note was high ethical solicitude; and her country walking mood, in which she reverted to the appearance of seventeen, and the note approached caprice. When I saw the blue gown,—maybe it was a 'frock,'—I said to myself, "She is in her country walking-mood!"

She greeted me with bright gayety, untinged, so far as I could perceive, by suppressed feeling. Then she led me through a spacious hall and across a magnificent area of Navajo rugs into a pleasant dusky living-room, where I made the acquaintance of her sister Alice, an agreeably quiet woman with peaceful eyes, and the children's tutor, Mr. Blakewell, a young fellow with extraordinarily courteous manner and easy conversation, but with the ascetic pallor and the faded iris which one associates with "spirituality."

I shall not dwell on these minor figures in the scene. They interested me only as notes of the background in which Cornelia had developed a fourth mood, which was new to me.