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.