But the dinner was delicious, and Susan, arriving at the crucial moment, had a more definite effect on the party than a case of champagne would have had. She chattered recklessly and incessantly, and when Mrs. Lancaster's mild "Sue, dear!" challenged one remark, she capped it with another still less conventional.
Her spirits were infectious, the gaiety became general. Mrs. Parker laughed until the tears streamed down her fat cheeks, and Mary Lord, the bony, sallow-faced, crippled sister who was the light and joy of Lydia Lord's drudging life, and who had been brought downstairs to- day as a special event, at a notable cost to her sister's and William Oliver's muscles, nearly choked over her cranberry sauce. Susan insisted that everyone should wear the paper caps that came in the bonbons, and looked like a pretty witch herself, under a cone- shaped hat of pink and blue. When, as was usual on all such occasions, a limited supply of claret came on with the dessert, she brought the whole company from laughter very close to tears, as she proposed, with pretty dignify, a toast to her aunt, "who makes this house such a happy home for us all." The toast was drunk standing, and Mrs. Lancaster cried into her napkin, with pride and tender emotion.
After dinner the diminished group trailed, still laughing and talking, upstairs to the little drawing-room, where perhaps seven or eight of them settled about the coal fire. Mrs. Lancaster, looking her best in a low-necked black silk, if rather breathless after the hearty dinner, eaten in too-tight corsets, had her big chair, Georgia curled girlishly on a footstool at her feet. Miss Lydia Lord stealthily ate a soda mint tablet now and then; her sister, propped with a dozen pillows on the sofa, fairly glowed with the unusual pleasure and excitement. Little Mrs. Cortelyou rocked back and forth; always loquacious, she was especially talkative after to- night's glass of wine.
Virginia, who played certain simple melodies very prettily, went to the piano and gave them "Maryland" and "Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes," and was heartily applauded. Mary Lou was finally persuaded to sing Tosti's "Farewell to Summer," in a high, sweet, self-conscious soprano.
Susan had disappeared. Just after dinner she had waylaid William Oliver, with a tense, "Will you walk around the block with me, Billy? I want to talk to you," and William, giving her a startled glance, had quietly followed her through the dark lower hall, and into the deserted, moonlighted, wind-swept street. The wind had fallen: stars were shining.