"Look, there he is!" whispered an excited debutante. "Oh, what a dream!..."
"I never saw Cally look better. If she were _only_ a little taller, what a match they'd make." (This was Cally's second-best friend Evelyn McVey, herself a tall girl.)
"Wissner ought to hit up that well-known snatch from' Lohengrin' ..."
"Certainly, Mrs. Bronson. Delighted to introduce you--introduce him, that is. Just a little later, though. Wouldn't have me interrupt _that_, would you?"
Thus faithful Willie Kerr, somewhat harassed by the responsibilities of being next friend to a crown prince.
Backbiting among the well-bred murmurs there was of course. Mrs. Berkeley Page, the hostile one who had made the remark about the Heths being very improbable people, naturally spoke in her characteristic vein. She made her observations to her great crony, Mr. Richard Marye, who plucked a glass of champagne from a beckoned lackey, and answered:
"Whoever conceived a Canning to be an anchorite?... My dear, why are you so severe with these very excellent and worthy people?"
"Is it severe," said the lady, "to refuse to be cozened by gay lips and dramatic hair?"
"Aspiration," mused her elderly friend, sipping comfortably, "is the mainspring of progress. Don't you admire onward and upward? What harm can a little climbing possibly do to you and me?"
"Oh, Mr. Dick! All the harm that the tail does when it begins to wag the dog. Don't you observe how these people set up their own standards, and get them accepted, whatever old fogies like you and me may say? They _unsoul_ us--that's what they do, and we may scream, but we can't stop them. Their argument is that money can do everything, and the intolerable part of it is that they _prove it_. Ah, me!--"
"Also, O temperament! O Moriarty! For my part, Mary, I'm a Democrat--"
"You're an old-fashioned Church of England man, and incidentally a great dear," said Mary Page. "And nothing on earth sickens you, and you know it, like this godless modern materialism...."
But who could smile more unaffectedly than Cally Heth at the bitter little peckings with which the dying order ever seeks to avenge itself on its brilliant supplanters? She passed on down the long room, stunning admirer in her train. High hope beckoned imminently to-night. By the subtle intuitions of her sex she had been notified that the steady approach of the symbol of her happiness consummate now quickened toward its shining end....