Page:The Green Bay Tree (1926).pdf/110

 the one she had tossed aside, and the yellow-green blended with the tawny red of her hair so that there was something nude and voluptuous in her appearance. The smile returned to her face, a smile which seemed to say, "The Town will see something the like of which it has never seen before."

Before going down she went to Irene's room once more, only to find it dark and empty. Clad in the gray suit and the plain black hat Irene had made her way silently to the stairs at the back of the house and thence through the gallery that led past the drawing-room windows into the dead park. The austere and empty chamber appeared to rouse a sudden shame in Lily, for she returned to her room before descending the long stairs and took from the trunk a great fan of black ostrich feathers to shield her bare breasts alike from the stares of the impudent and the disapproving.

The ball was a great success. The orchestra, placed in the little alcove by the gallery, played a quadrille followed by waltzes, two-steps and polkas. Until ten o'clock the carriages made their way along Halsted street past the Mills and the squalid houses through the wrought iron gates into the park; and at midnight they began to roll away again carrying the guests to their homes. Lily, all graciousness and charm, moved among the dancers distributing her favors equitably save in the single instance of Willie Harrison, who looked so downcast and prematurely old in his black evening clothes that she danced with him three times and sat out a waltz and a polka. And all the Town, ignorant of the truth, whispered that Willie's chances once more appeared good.

Ellen Tolliver was there, in a dress made at home by her mother, and she spent much of the evening by the side of her aunt Julia who sat in black jet and amethysts at one end of the drawing-room leaning on her stick and looking for all the world like a wicked duchess. At the sound of the music and the sight of the dancers, the old gleam returned for a little time to her tired eyes.

Ellen was younger than the other guests and knew most of them only by sight but she had partners none the less, for she was handsome despite her badly made gown and her absurd pompadour, and she danced with a barbaric and energetic grace.