The Bacillus of Beauty

When we went down to dinner, I did see the house; for at a word from Milly, partly in good nature and partly in pride, Mrs. Van Dam led the way through stately rooms that kept me alternating between confusion and delight, until she paused in a gilded salon, with stuccoed ceiling and softest of soft rose hangings, where I scarcely dared set foot upon the shining floor.

Less in jest than wonder, I asked if Marie Antoinette didn't walk there o' nights.

"It's Diane, isn't it, who walks here this night?" she said, linking her arm in mine and leading me to a tall mirror. Then she changed colour a little, took her arm away hastily and walked from the great glass. Kind and friendly as she was, she couldn't quite like to see her own image reflected there--beside mine!

"Diane and the Queen of Sheba!" exclaimed Milly, for beside our simple frocks the General was indeed magnificent.

Her brow cleared at this, and she laughed with satisfaction. When I blurted out something about having once run off to a shop parlour, before I came to Aunt, for a peep at a full-length glass, she laughed again at the confession and called me "a buttercup, a perfect Diane."

At dinner we met Mr. Van Dam--a small man who doesn't talk much; and it seemed so exciting to have wine at table, though of course I did not taste it, or coffee.

And it was delightful to lean back in the carriage, as we drove to the Opera House, and remember how Kitty and I used to pin up our skirts under our ulsters and jog about in street cars. Mrs. Van Dam wore a wonderful hooded cloak of lace and fur, and her gloves fastened all the way to her elbows with silk loops that passed over silver balls.

I had been so impatient during dinner, because they didn't sit down until eight o'clock, and then dawdled as if there were no Opera to follow; but I needn't have worried, for although the performance had begun when we arrived, there were still many vacant places in the great house. I drew closer about my face the scarf that Ethel had lent me until we had passed through the dazzling lobby, up the stairway and through the corridors, and until the red curtains of the box had parted, and I had slipped into the least conspicuous chair. Muffled as I was, I trembled at the first glance at the great, brilliantly lighted house, from which rose the stir of a gathering audience and a rustle of low voices.

"Why, you're not nervous, are you?" the General asked. "I've brought you here early on purpose; you'll be comfortably settled before anybody notices."