So Susan went to the dance.  Miss Isabel Wallace sent over a great box of gowns from which she might choose the most effective, and Emily, with a sort of timid sullenness, urged her to go.  Ella and her charge went into town in the afternoon, and loitered into the club for tea.  Susan, whose color was already burning high, and whose eyes were dancing, fretted inwardly at Ella’s leisurely enjoyment of a second and a third sup.  It was nearly six o’clock, it was after six!  Ella seemed willing to delay indefinitely, waiting on the stairs of the club for a long chat with a passing woman, and lingering with various friends in the foyer of the great hotel.

But finally they were in the big bedrooms, with Clemence, Ella’s maid, in eager and interested attendance.  Clemence had laid Susan’s delicious frills and laces out upon the bed; Susan’s little wrapper was waiting her; there was nothing to do now but plunge into the joy of dressing.  A large, placid person known to Susan vaguely as the Mrs. Keith, who had been twice divorced, had the room next to Ella, and pretty Mary Peacock, her daughter, shared Susan’s room.  The older ladies, assuming loose wrappers, sat gossiping over cocktails and smoking cigarettes, and Mary and Susan seized the opportunity to monopolize Clemence.  Clemence arranged Susan’s hair, pulling, twisting, flinging hot masses over the girl’s face, inserting pins firmly, loosening strands with her hard little French fingers.  Susan had only occasional blinded glimpses of her face, one temple bare and bald, the other eclipsed like a gipsy’s.

“Look here, Clemence, if I don’t like it, out it comes!” she said.

“Mais, certainement, ca va sans dire!” Clemence agreed serenely.  Mary Peacock, full of amused interest, watched as she rubbed her face and throat with cold cream.

“I wish I had your neck and shoulders, Miss Brown,” said Miss Peacock.  “I get so sick of high-necked gowns that I’d almost rather stay home!”

“Why, you’re fatter than I am!” Susan exclaimed.  “You’ve got lovely shoulders!”

“Yes, darling!” Mary said, gushingly.  “And I’ve got the sort of blood that breaks out, in a hot room,” she added after a moment, “don’t look so scared, it’s nothing serious!  But I daren’t ever take the risk of wearing a low gown!”

“But how did you get it?” ejaculated Susan.  “Are you taking something for it?”

“No, love,” Mary continued, in the same, amused, ironic strain, “because I’ve been traveling about, half my life, to get it cured, Germany and France, everywhere!  And there ain’t no such animal!  Isn’t it lovely?”

“But how did you get it?” Susan innocently persisted.  Mary gave her a look half exasperated and half warning; but, when Clemence had stepped into the next room for a moment, she said: 

“Don’t be an utter fool!  Where do you think I got it?

“The worst of it is,” she went on pleasantly, as Clemence came back, “that my father’s married again, you know, to the sweetest little thing you ever saw.  An only girl, with four or five big brothers, and her father a minister!  Well—­”