Claire sat and watched her. She was not even smiling now; she was biting her lip. She had concluded, some time ago, that she understood Mrs. Diggs perfectly. But she did not know, at present, in what spirit to take this noisy paroxysm. Was it sincere, amicable amusement, or was it pitiless and impudent mockery? XV. But Claire's doubts were soon settled. If that visit did not precisely end them, a few succeeding days forever laid the ghost of her spleen. Mrs. Diggs had been jocundly candid, and that was all. No baleful sarcasms had pulsed beneath her vivacious prophecies. She soon convinced Claire that she was a stanch and loyal confederate. She often dropped into the Twenty-Eighth Street house, and praised its appointments warmly. "Your little reception-room is perfect," she told Claire, "with those dark crimson walls and that furniture so covered with big pink roses. I like it immensely, don't you know? I wouldn't have liked it two or three years ago; I would have thought crimson and pink a weird discord; but fashion gives certain things their stamp; it makes us wake up, some morning, and find our hates turned to loves." About the dining-room, on the same floor, and the drawing-room, on the floor above, she was genially critical. This or that detail she discovered to be "not just quite right, don't you know?" and Claire in nearly all such cases changed dissent into agreement after a little serious reflection. Some of the resultant alterations involved decided expense. This Claire regretted while she would let her husband incur it. Hollister always did so readily enough. Wall Street had rather smiled upon him, of late. A few of his ventures had become bolder, but flattering successes had persistently followed them. "The theatre is all lit," he said to her one evening, "but the curtain doesn't rise. How is that, Claire?" She knew perfectly well what he meant, but chose to feign that she did not know. They had been surveying together a few decorative improvements, recently wrought, in mantel, dado, or even table-cover. "I don't think I follow your metaphor," said Claire. There was the tiny outbreak of a smile at each corner of her mouth. It struck Hollister, who was standing quite near her, that she looked delightfully prim. He kissed her before he answered, and then, while he did so, let his lips almost graze her ear, saying in an absurd guttural semitone, as of melo-dramatic confidence:-- "I mean that it's time for Act First. Time for the lords and ladies to enter, with a grand flourish of trumpets. Of course, when they do come, they'll all kiss the hand of their charming hostess, just like this." But she would not let him kiss her hand, though he caught it and made the attempt. "There are no lords and ladies in New York," she said, laughing and receding from him at the same time. "And if they _should_ come, they would never behave in such an old-fashioned style as that."