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by
(Mrs. Basil de Sélincourt)
Author of 'The Little French Girl,' 'Franklin Winslow Kane,' 'Tante,' etc.
Three people were sitting in a small drawing-room, the windows of whichlooked out upon a wintry Boston street. It was a room rather empty andundecorated, but the idea of austerity was banished by a temperatureso nearly tropical. There were rows of books on white shelves, a paleDonatello cast on the wall, and two fine bronze vases filled with roses onthe mantelpiece. Over the roses hung a portrait in oils, very sleek andvery accurate, of a commanding old gentleman in uniform, painted by awell-known German painter, and all about the room were photographs of youngwomen, most of them young mothers, with smooth heads and earnest faces,holding babies. Outside, the snow was heaped high along the pavementsand thickly ridged the roofs and lintels. After the blizzard the sun wasshining and all the white glittered. The national colors, to a patrioticimagination, were pleasingly represented by the red, white and blue of thebrick houses, the snow, and the vivid sky above.
The three people who talked, with many intimate pauses of silence, were allBostonians, though of widely different types. The hostess, sitting in aneasy chair and engaged with some sewing, was a girl of about twenty-six.She wore a brown skirt of an ugly cut and shade and a white silk shirt,adorned with a high linen collar, a brown tie and an old-fashioned goldwatch-chain. Her forehead was too large, her nose too short; but her lipswere full and pleasant and when she smiled she showed charming teeth. Theblack-rimmed glasses she wore emphasized the clearness and candor of hereyes. Her thick, fair hair was firmly fastened in a group of knobs down theback of her head. There was an element of the grotesque in her appearanceand in her careful, clumsy movements, yet, with it, a quality almostgraceful, that suggested homely and wholesome analogies,—freshly-bakedbread; fair, sweet linen; the safety and content of evening firesides. Thiswas Mary Colton.
The girl who sat near the window, her furs thrown back from her shoulders,a huge muff dangling from her hand, was a few years younger and exceedinglypretty. Her skin was unusually white, her hair unusually black, her velvetyeyes unusually large and dark. In. her attitude, lounging, graceful,indifferent, in her delicate face, the straight, sulky brows, the coldlyclosed lips, the coldly observant eyes, a sort of permanent discontent wasexpressed, as though she could find, neither in herself nor in the world,any adequate satisfaction. This was Rose Packer.
The other guest, sitting sidewise on a stiff chair, his hand hanging overthe back, his long legs crossed, was a young man, graceful, lean andshabby. He was clean-shaven, with brown skin and golden hair, an unrulylock lying athwart his forehead. His face, intent, alert, was veiled inan indolent nonchalance. He looked earnest, yet capricious, staunch, yetsensitive, and one felt that, conscious of these weaknesses, he tried tomaster or to hide them.
These three had known one another since childhood. Jack's family was oldand rich; Mary's old and poor; Rose Packer's new and of fantastic wealth.Rose was a young woman of fashion and her whole aspect seemed to repudiateany closeness of tie between herself and Mary, who passed her time incaring for General Colton, her invalid father, attending committees, and,as a diversion, going to "sewing-circles" and symphony concerts; but shewas