She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair.  She certainly knew how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a picture of.

The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone down with a report that Miss Kent was “stunning;” and two or three housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to her carriage.  It was just as good, so far as these things went, as if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody.

And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than “these things,” yet.  She reached, for herself, to just what she had been able to appreciate in others.  She had taken in the housemaid and small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little day of living it.  She had not found out, yet, how short a time that would last.  “Verily,” it was said for us all long ago, “ye shall have each your reward,” such as ye look and labor for.

One great boy was waiting for her, ex officio, and without disguise,—­the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to read to-night.

He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her carriage, and accompany her to the hall.

The little boys observed him with exasperation.  The housemaids dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the staircase; her cafe-au-lait silk rolling and glittering behind her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the Phoenix Hotel stairs.

The President of the People’s Lyceum Club heard the rustle of elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended arm.

That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the sidewalk to the hack.  What would you have?  There could not have been more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by.  She was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading.  What more could Fanny Kemble do?

Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were gathered.  She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building, whence she would enter, in full glory, upon the platform.

She came in gracefully; a little breezy she could not help being; it was the one movement of the universe to her at that moment, her ten steps across the platform,—­her little half bow, half droop, before the applauding audience,—­the taking up of the bouquet laid upon her table,—­her smile, with a scarcely visible inclination again,—­and the sitting down among those waves of amber that rose up shining in the gas-light, about her, as she subsided among her silken draperies.

She was imitative; she had learned the little outsides of her art well; but you see the art was not high.