Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/99

 Mr. Jones had the same thought, but did not blush. He laid an armful of fluent gold across the chair. The girl had never guessed that such things existed. Fairy-land seemed possible. She put on a shapeless thing of metal cloth, embroidered all over with trailing Persian flowers and fruits, springing birds and leaping antelopes. It wrapped her closely as though its weight came from water, not gold.

Dazed and shy, she stole back to the parlor where the Captain, Miss Bigley, and the five enchanting girls chatted and waited until the time of departure. Miss Bigley rushed out breathless to meet her, and exclaimed over the number and the intricacy of the garments. Lanice read in her protruding eyes that the sumptuous golden overdress was inappropriate for an unpretentious editoress.

'Now, Miss Quincy, with all her wealth of golden hair...now really so much gold makes you look quite pale, Miss Bardeen, and Miss Quincy's costume is overplain, is it not?' Miss Quincy wore the four-hundred-year coat and Captain Jones evinced not the slightest interest in this change. Lanice wondered why he had given her this treasure. She guessed that her costume, so lifeless in a heap and so vital upon the body, was more precious than the modern hangings of the other young ladies. Now she was dressed as he had wished, but he only cast upon her a careless, roving glance and was entirely absorbed in the Scollay girls. Their father and handsome young uncle Lanice knew had made much of him.

There was a subtle manœuvring among the ladies,