Miss Felicia’s proposal having therefore been duly carried out, with a number of others not thought of when the tea was first discussed—­including some pots of geraniums in the window, red, of course, to match the color of Peter’s room—­and the freshening up of certain swiss curtains which so offended Miss Felicia’s ever-watchful eyes that she burst out with:  “It is positively disgraceful, Peter, to see how careless you are getting—­” At which Mrs. McGuffey blushed to the roots of her hair, and washed them herself that very night before she closed her eyes.  The great day having arrived, I say the tea-table was set with Peter’s best, including “the dearest of silver teapots” that Miss Felicia had given him for special occasions; the table covered with a damask cloth and all made ready for the arrival of her guests.  This done, the lady returned to her own room, from which she emerged an hour later in a soft gray silk relieved by a film of old lace at her throat, blending into the tones of her gray hair brushed straight up from her forehead and worn high over a cushion, the whole topped by a tiny jewel which caught the light like a drop of dew.

And a veritable grand dame she looked, and was, as she took her seat and awaited the arrival of her guests—­in bearing, in the way she moved her head; in the way she opened her fan—­in the selection of the fan itself, for that matter.  You felt it in the color and length of her gloves; the size of her pearl ear rings (not too large, and yet not too small), in the choice of the few rings that encircled her slender and now somewhat shrunken fingers (one hoop of gold had a history that the old French Ambassador could have told if he wanted to, so Peter once hinted to me)—­ everything she did in fact betrayed a wide acquaintance with the great world and its requirements and exactions.

Other women of her age might of their choice drop into charities, or cats, or nephews and nieces, railing against the present and living only in the past; holding on like grim death to everything that made it respect able, so that they looked for all the world like so many old daguerreotypes pulled from the frames.  Not so Miss Felicia Grayson of Geneseo, New York.  Her past was a flexible, india-rubber kind of a past that she stretched out after her.  She might still wear her hair as she did when the old General raved over her, although the frost of many winters had touched it; but she would never hold on to the sleeves of those days or the skirts or the mantles:  Out or in they must go, be puffed, cut bias, or made plain, just as the fashion of the day insisted.  Oh! a most level-headed, common-sense, old aristocrat was Dame Felicia!