should he?" was Linda's just perceptibly impatient response. Then
they told her to be quiet because they wanted to listen to the music.

This consisted in studying, through suspended glasses in chased
platinum, a discreet programme. At the end of a selection they
either applauded condescendingly or told each other that they hadn't
cared for that last--really too peculiar. Whichever happened, the
leader of the small orchestra, an extravagant Italian with a supple
waist, turned and bowed repeatedly with a grimacing smile. The
music, usually Viennese, was muted and emotional; its strains
blended perfectly with the floating scents of the women and the
faintly perceptible pungent odors of dinner. Every little while a
specially insinuating melody became, apparently, tangled in the
women's breathing, and their breasts, cunningly traced and caressed
in tulle, would be disturbed.

Mrs. Condon applauded more vigorously than was sanctioned by the
others' necessity for elegance; the frank clapping of her pink palms
never failed to betray a battery of affected and significant
surprise in eyes like--polished cold agates. Linda, seated beside
her parent, could be seen to lay a hand, narrow and blanched and
marked by an emerald, on the elder's knee. Her pale fine lips moved
rapidly with the shadow of trouble beneath the intense black bang.

"I wish you wouldn't do it so loudly, mother," was what she
whispered.