CHAPTER XV

During the ten days allowed her for preparation Kitty continued charmed
with Hayden's idea of a butterfly dinner. It suited her volatile fancy.
Her enthusiasm remained at high pitch, and she exerted herself to the
utmost in behalf of her favorite cousin. As a consequence, although she
made a pretense of consulting Hayden about the various arrangements, the
final results were almost as much of a surprise to him as to the rest of
the guests, and as he walked through his rooms at the last moment he
admitted to himself that Kitty really had surpassed herself.

Yellow and violet orchids fluttered everywhere, carrying out the
butterfly effect; and while he stood admiring their airy and
unsubstantial grace, Kitty floated in followed by Hampton, thin and
kindly, with more of an expression of interest than he usually wore.

"Why, Kitty," cried Hayden, shaking hands with Hampton, "you look exactly
like a butterfly, a lovely little blue butterfly attracted here by the
flowers."

"But that is what I am," Kitty answered him triumphantly. "A blue
butterfly. Don't you see my long wing-sleeves? And look at the blue
butterflies in my hair! Oh," as Mrs. Habersham came in, "here is Bea.
Isn't she gorgeous?"

Bea herself was the affirmative answer to that question. She was indeed
gorgeous, a splendid brown butterfly with all kinds of iridescent effects
gleaming through her gauzes. Dark velvet outlined her skirt and floating
sleeves, and dark antennae stood upright from the coils of her hair.

Marcia, who was with her, to Hayden's infinite relief, was a white
butterfly, looking very lovely, but, as he noticed with concern, paler
than he had ever seen her, and with something like distress in her eyes,
quite perceptible to him if unnoticed by the rest. He could not keep his
solicitude out of his voice and glance, and this, he felt instinctively,
annoyed, instead of gratifying her; for almost immediately she assumed a
gaiety of manner foreign to her usual gentle and rather cool reserve.

His attention was distracted for the moment by the arrival of Edith
Symmes, and the little group paid her the momentary attention of an awed
silence, for she had perpetrated what was, perhaps, the greatest atrocity
of her life--a vivid scarlet gown which made her face look a livid wedge.

"Don't you like this frock?" she whispered complacently to Bea Habersham.

"No, you know it is a horror, Edith," that lady replied, with the
bluntness