Mrs. Edes announced a duet by Miss MacDonald and Mrs. Wells, and sat down, and again the perfume of rose leaves was perceptible.  Karl von Rosen glanced at the next performers, Miss MacDonald, who was very pretty and well-dressed in white embroidered cloth, and Mrs. Wells, who was not pretty, but was considered very striking, who trailed after her in green folds edged with fur, and bore a roll of music.  She seated herself at the piano with a graceful sweep of her green draperies, which defined her small hips, and struck the keys with slender fingers quite destitute of rings, always lifting them high with a palpable affectation not exactly doubtful—­that was saying too much—­but she was considered to reach limits of propriety with her sinuous motions, the touch of her sensitive fingers upon piano keys, and the quick flash of her dark eyes in her really plain face.  There was, for the women in Fairbridge, a certain mischievous fascination about Mrs. Wells.  Moreover, they had in her their one object of covert gossip, their one stimulus to unlawful imagination.

There was a young man who played the violin.  His name was Henry Wheaton, and he was said to be a frequent caller at Mrs. Wells’, and she played his accompaniments, and Mr. Wells was often detained in New York until the late train.  Then there was another young man who played the ’cello, and he called often.  And there was Ellis Bainbridge, who had a fine tenor voice, and he called.  It was delightful to have a woman of that sort, of whom nothing distinctly culpable could be affirmed, against whom no good reason could be brought for excluding her from the Zenith Club and the social set.  In their midst, Mrs. Wells furnished the condiments, the spice, and pepper, and mustard for many functions.  She relieved to a great extent the monotony of unquestioned propriety.  It would have been horribly dull if there had been no woman in the Zenith Club who furnished an excuse for the other members’ gossip.

Leila MacDonald, so carefully dressed and brushed and washed, and so free from defects that she was rather irritating, began to sing, then people listened.  Karl von Rosen listened.  She really had a voice which always surprised and charmed with the first notes, then ceased to charm.  Leila MacDonald was as a good canary bird, born to sing, and dutifully singing, but without the slightest comprehension of her song.  It was odd too that she sang with plenty of expression, but her own lack of realisation seemed to dull it for her listeners.  Karl von Rosen listened, then his large eyes again turned introspective.

Mrs. Edes again arose, after the singing and playing ladies had finished their performance and returned to their seats, and announced a recitation by Miss Sally Anderson.  Miss Anderson wore a light summer gown, and swept to the front, and bent low to her audience, then at once began her recitation with a loud crash of emotion.  She postured, she gesticulated.  She lowered her voice to inaudibility, she raised it to shrieks and wails.  She did everything which she had been taught, and she had been taught a great deal.  Mrs. Sarah Joy Snyder listened and got data for future lectures, with her mirthful mouth sternly set.