Audrey

Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy

Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes

at her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the black

handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of

waiting before her mistress spoke. "You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at

home, Chloe. Bring him here."

The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and

commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and

head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed man

since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might

find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, and

shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from

the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom

into her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three Tory partisans. "Now

I am less like a ghost," she said, "Mr. Green, do I not look well and

merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?"

In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or

glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ball

that night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward's step upon the

landing. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she

extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table.

"'Fair tresses man's imperial race insnare,

And beauty draws us with a single hair,'"

he quoted, with a smile. Then: "Will you take our hearts in blue to-night,

Evelyn? You know that I love you best in blue."

She lifted her fan from the table, and waved it lightly to and fro. "I go

in rose color," she said. "'Tis the gown I wore at Lady Rich's rout. I

dare say you do not remember it? But my Lord of Peterborough said"--She

broke off, and smiled to her fan.

Her voice was sweet and slightly drawling. The languid turn of the wrist,

the easy grace of attitude, the beauty of bared neck and tinted face, of

lowered lids and slow, faint smile,--oh, she was genuine fine lady, if she

was not quite Evelyn! A breeze blowing through the open windows stirred

their gay hangings of flowered cotton; the black girl sat in a corner and

sewed; the supple fingers of the hairdresser went in and out of the heavy

hair; roses in a deep blue bowl made the room smell like a garden. Haward

sighed, so pleasant was it to sit quietly in this cool chamber, after the

glare and wavering of the world without. "My Lord of Peterborough is

magnificent at compliments," he said kindly, "but 'twould be a jeweled

speech indeed that outdid your deserving, Evelyn. Come, now, wear the

blue! I will find you white roses; you shall wear them for a breast knot,

and in the minuet return me one again."