CHAPTER XVIII

A QUESTION OF COLORS


Evelyn, seated at her toilette table, and in the hands of Mr. Timothy
Green, hairdresser in ordinary to Williamsburgh, looked with unseeing eyes
at her own fair reflection in the glass before her. Chloe, the black
handmaiden who stood at the door, latch in hand, had time to grow tired of
waiting before her mistress spoke. "You may tell Mr. Haward that I am at
home, Chloe. Bring him here."

The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and
commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and
head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed man
since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might
find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, and
shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from
the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom
into her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three Tory partisans. "Now
I am less like a ghost," she said, "Mr. Green, do I not look well and
merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?"

In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or
glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ball
that night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward's step upon the
landing. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she
extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table.