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He did not know why he said this. He was not especially poetic. He had not formulated the
phrase beforehand. Since his first glimpse of her in the hall, his feelings and ideas had been
leaping and plunging like spirited horses. This girl made him set his teeth and narrow his eyes.
Involuntarily he squared his jaw, looking more defiant, forceful, efficient, as she drew near,
But Aileen and her sister were almost instantly surrounded by young men seeking to be
introduced and to write their names on dance-cards, and for the time being she was lost to view.
Chapter XVIII
The seeds of change--subtle, metaphysical--are rooted deeply. From the first mention of the
dance by Mrs. Cowperwood and Anna, Aileen had been conscious of a desire toward a more
effective presentation of herself than as yet, for all her father's money, she had been able to
achieve. The company which she was to encounter, as she well knew, was to be so much more
impressive, distinguished than anything she had heretofore known socially. Then, too,
Cowperwood appeared as something more definite in her mind than he had been before, and to
save herself she could not get him out of her consciousness.
A vision of him had come to her but an hour before as she was dressing. In a way she had
dressed for him. She was never forgetful of the times he had looked at her in an interested way.
He had commented on her hands once. To-day he had said that she looked "stunning," and she
had thought how easy it would be to impress him to-night--to show him how truly beautiful she
was.
She had stood before her mirror between eight and nine--it was nine-fifteen before she was
really ready--and pondered over what she should wear. There were two tall pier-glasses in her
wardrobe-- an unduly large piece of furniture--and one in her closet door. She stood before the
latter, looking at her bare arms and shoulders, her shapely figure, thinking of the fact that her
left shoulder had a dimple, and that she had selected garnet garters decorated with heart-
shaped silver buckles. The corset could not be made quite tight enough at first, and she chided
her maid, Kathleen Kelly. She studied how to arrange her hair, and there was much ado about
that before it was finally adjusted. She penciled her eyebrows and plucked at the hair about her
forehead to make it loose and shadowy. She cut black court-plaster with her nail-shears and
tried different-sized pieces in different places. Finally, she found one size and one place that
suited her. She turned her head from side to side, looking at the combined effect of her hair, her
penciled brows, her dimpled shoulder, and the black beauty-spot. If some one man could see
her as she was now, some time! Which man? That thought scurried back like a frightened rat
into its hole. She was, for all her strength, afraid of the thought of the one--the very deadly--the
man.
And then she came to the matter of a train-gown. Kathleen laid out five, for Aileen had come
into the joy and honor of these things recently, and she had, with the permission of her mother
and father, indulged herself to the full. She studied a golden-yellow silk, with cream-lace
shoulder-straps, and some gussets of garnet beads in the train that shimmered delightfully, but
set it aside. She considered favorably a black-and-white striped silk of odd gray effect, and,
though she was sorely tempted to wear it, finally let it go. There was a maroon dress, with
basque and overskirt over white silk; a rich cream-colored satin; and then this black sequined
gown, which she finally chose. She tried on the cream-colored satin first, however, being in
much doubt about it; but her penciled eyes and beauty-spot did not seem to harmonize with it.
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