The odour of success was in the warm, slightly heavy air, which seemed
distilled from rare old fabrics, from brocades and tapestries, from the
deep, mingled tones of the pictures, the subdued radiance of cabinets
and old porcelain and the jars of winter roses standing in soft circles
of lamp-light. Raymond felt himself in the presence of an effect in
regard to which he remained in ignorance of the cause--a mystery that
required a key. Cousin Maria's success was unexplained so long as she
simply stood there with her little familiar, comforting, upward gaze,
talking in coaxing cadences, with exactly the same manner she had
brought ten years ago from California, to a tall, bald, bending, smiling
young man, evidently a foreigner, who had just come in and whose name
Raymond had not caught from the lips of the _maitre d'hotel_. Was he
just one of themselves--was he there for Effie, or perhaps even for
Dora? The unexplained must preponderate till Dora came in; he found he
counted upon her, even though in her letters (it was true that for the
last couple of years they had come but at long intervals) she had told
him so little about their life. She never spoke of people; she talked of
the books she read, of the music she had heard or was studying (a whole
page sometimes about the last concert at the Conservatoire), the new
pictures and the manner of the different artists.

When she entered the room three or four minutes after the arrival of the
young foreigner, with whom her mother conversed in just the accents
Raymond had last heard at the hotel in the Fifth Avenue (he was obliged
to admit that she gave herself no airs; it was clear that her success
had not gone in the least to her head); when Dora at last appeared she
was accompanied by Mademoiselle Bourde. The presence of this lady--he
didn't know she was still in the house--Raymond took as a sign that
they were really dining _en famille_, so that the young man was either
an actual or a prospective intimate. Dora shook hands first with her
cousin, but he watched the manner of her greeting with the other visitor
and saw that it indicated extreme friendliness--on the part of the
latter. If there was a charming flush in her cheek as he took her hand,
that was the remainder of the colour that had risen there as she came
toward Raymond. It will be seen that our young man still had an eye for
the element of fascination, as he used to regard it, in this quiet,
dimly-shining maiden.