The older women sat against the wall, a dado of fat and diamonds, and indulged in much caustic criticism.
The old beaux stood in a group and exchanged opinions on the relative pretensions of the old and the new.
"Take it all in all, not to compare," said Ben Sansome. "Miss Montgomery is excessively pretty, but no figure and no style. Miss Brannan looks like a Parisian cocotte. Miss Folsom has eyes, but nothing else--and when you think of 'Lupie Hathaway's eyes! And not one has the beginnings of the polished charm of manner, the fire of glance, the _je ne sais quoi_ of Mrs. Hunt Maclean. Just look at her in her silver brocade, her white hair _à la marquise_. She's handsomer than the whole lot of them--"
The white tulle gown, made with a half-dozen skirts, floated about her so lightly that she seemed rising from, suspended above it. Even beside her father she looked tall; and her neck and arms, the rise of her girlish bust, were more dazzlingly white than the diaphanous substance about her. Her haughty little head was set well back on a full firm throat, not too long. Her cheeks were touched with pink; her lips were full of it. Her long lashes and low straight brows were many shades darker than the unruly mane of glittering coppery hair. And she carried herself with a swing, with an imperious pride, with a nonchalant command of immediate and unmeasured admiration which sent every maiden's heart down with a drop and every man's pulses jumping.
"I give in!" gasped Ben Sansome. "We never had anything like that--never! Gad! the girl's got everything. It's almost unfair."
Alan Rush turned white, but he did not lose his presence of mind. He asked Don Roberto to present him at once, and secured the next dance. It was a waltz; and as the admirably mated couple floated down the room, many others paused to watch them. Helena's limpid eyes, raised to the eager ones above her, did all the execution of which they were capable. During the next entre-dance she was mobbed. Twenty men pressed about her, introduced by Don Roberto and Rollins, until she finally commanded them to "go away and give her air," then walked off with Eugene Fort, finishing his first epigram and mocking at his second. He had only a fourth of the next dance; but as Helena had refused to permit her admirers to write their names on her card, and as she was at no pains to remember which fourth was whose, giving her scraps to the first comer, Rush and Fort, who had had the forethought not to pre-engage themselves, and were constantly in her wake, secured more than their share. But the other men had time and energy to fight for their own: Helena was constantly stopped in the middle of the room with a firm demand that she should keep her word. Between the dances the men crowded about her, eager for a glance, and at supper the small table before her looked like an offering at a Chinese funeral.