A carriage drew up to the door, early as it was—ten o’clock had not yet struck—and a customer entered, a short, dark young woman of a marked type of Spanish beauty, who walked with a bold cadence of the hips that set her maize silk panniers swinging, and a carriage of the head that you might call like that of a fawn, or of a serpent, as your feelings towards her prompted.
Pamela advanced in her most engaging manner.
“What can I do for you, madam?” She broke off. “Merciful heavens!” something within her cried. “I should know that face.”
The newcomer fixed her with beautiful, insolent eyes. There was a gleam of rubies in each delicate ear, and at the dusky round throat a red fire that came and went from a monstrous clasp of the same stones, half-hidden by laces.
“If you will show me a hat, all black, with black feathers,” began the lady. She had a slow voice, rich like cream, and an odd guttural aspiration of the consonants. “Something with the Spanish air.”
In her turn, she stopped short. The milliner had fallen back a pace, and was looking at her with horror.
“I think,” said Pamela, very low but very distinctly, “that you have entered this establishment by mistake.”
The foreign lady wheeled upon her. There was no doubt about it, with all her beauty she was viperish.
“Fool, my name is the Countess Sanquhar!”
“And a very fit name for you, too!” responded Pamela.