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."