She sat at the dinner table with us, and divided the honors equally with Severnius.
I wish I could give you an idea of that dinner,--the dining-room, the service, the whole thing! It surpassed my finest conceptions of taste and elegance.
We sat down not merely to eat,--though I was hungry enough!--but to enjoy ourselves in other ways.
There was everything for the eye to delight in. The room was rich in artistic decorations upon which the rarest talent must have been employed. The table arrangements were superb; gold and silver, crystal, fine china, embroidered linen, flowers. And the food, served in many courses, was a happy combination of the substantial and the delicate. There was music--not too near--of a bright and lively character. Music enters largely into the life of these people. It seemed to me that something beat time to almost everything we did.
The conversation carried on between the brother and sister--in which I could take no more part than a deaf-mute--was, I felt sure, extremely entertaining if not important. My eyes served me well,--for one sense is quick to assume the burdens of another,--and I knew that the talk was not mere banter, nor was it simply the necessary exchange of words and opinions about everyday matters which must take place in families periodically, concerning fuel, and provisions, and servants, and water-tax, and the like. It took a much higher range. The faces of both were animated, their eyes beamed brightly upon each other. It was clear that the brother did not talk down to her understanding, rather he talked up to it,--or no, they were on a level with each other, the highest level of both, for they held each other up to their best. However, Elodia had been away for a couple of days, I learned, and absence gives a bloom of newness which it is delightful to brush off.
I did not detect any of the quality we call chivalry in Severnius' pose, nor of its complement in hers. Though one would hardly expect that between brothers and sisters anywhere. Still, we have a way with our near women relations which never ignores the distinction between the sexes; we humor them, patronize them, tyrannize over them. And they defer to, and exalt us, and usually acknowledge our superiority.