gown of old rose, with a low, square neck showing a delicate chemisette of
fine lace. Her face and figure were still notable, though her face was not as
smoothly sweet as it had been years before when Cowperwood had first met
her. Anna Cowperwood was not pretty, though she could not be said to be
homely. She was small and dark, with a turned-up nose, snapping black
eyes, a pert, inquisitive, intelligent, and alas, somewhat critical, air. She had
considerable tact in the matter of dressing. Black, in spite of her darkness,
with shining beads of sequins on it, helped her complexion greatly, as did a
red rose in her hair. She had smooth, white well-rounded arms and
shoulders. Bright eyes, a pert manner, clever remarks—these assisted to
create an illusion of charm, though, as she often said, it was of little use.
"Men want the dolly things."
In the evening inpour of young men and women came Aileen and Norah, the
former throwing off a thin net veil of black lace and a dolman of black silk,
which her brother Owen took from her. Norah was with Callum, a straight,
erect, smiling young Irishman, who looked as though he might carve a
notable career for himself. She wore a short, girlish dress that came to a
little below her shoe-tops, a pale-figured lavender and white silk, with a
fluffy hoop-skirt of dainty laced-edged ruffles, against which tiny bows of
lavender stood out in odd places. There was a great sash of lavender about
her waist, and in her hair a rosette of the same color. She looked
exceedingly winsome—eager and bright-eyed.
But behind her was her sister in ravishing black satin, scaled as a fish with
glistening crimsoned-silver sequins, her round, smooth arms bare to the
shoulders, her corsage cut as low in the front and back as her daring, in
relation to her sense of the proprieties, permitted. She was naturally of
exquisite figure, erect, full-breasted, with somewhat more than gently
swelling hips, which, nevertheless, melted into lovely, harmonious lines; and
this low-cut corsage, receding back and front into a deep V, above a short,
gracefully draped overskirt of black tulle and silver tissue, set her off to
perfection. Her full, smooth, roundly modeled neck was enhanced in its
cream-pink whiteness by an inch-wide necklet of black jet cut in many
faceted black squares. Her complexion, naturally high in tone because of the
pink of health, was enhanced by the tiniest speck of black court-plaster laid
upon her cheekbone; and her hair, heightened in its reddish-gold by her
dress, was fluffed loosely and adroitly about her eyes. The main mass of this
treasure was done in two loose braids caught up in a black spangled net at
the back of her neck; and her eyebrows had been emphasized by a pencil
into something almost as significant as her hair. She was, for the occasion,
a little too emphatic, perhaps, and yet more because of her burning vitality
than of her costume. Art for her should have meant subduing her physical
and spiritual significance. Life for her meant emphasizing them.