I looked anxiously at my pupil, whose aspect was not altogether reassuring. She was a tall, pale, high-shouldered young person, elaborately dressed, with a figure so artificially bolstered up that only by a great stretch of imagination could one realize that she was probably built on average anatomical lines. Her hair, dressed on the top of her head and struck through with tortoiseshell combs, produced by its unnatural neatness the same effect of unreality. She was decidedly plain withal, and her manners struck me as being inferior to those of her mother and brother. She took up her seat at some little distance from the sofa, and whenever I glanced in her direction, I saw a pair of sharp eyes fixed on my face, with something of the unsparing criticism of a hostile child in their gaze.
I began to be terribly conscious of my disordered appearance—I am not one of those people who can afford to affect the tempestuous petticoat—and grew more and more bewildered in my efforts to follow the little Marchesa through the mazes of her fluent but curiously accentuated French.
It was with a feeling of relief that I saw one of the inner doors open, and a stout, good-tempered looking lady, in a loose morning jacket, come smiling into the room. She shook hands with me cordially, and taking a chair opposite the sofa, began to nod and smile in the most reassuring fashion. She spoke no English and very little French, but was determined that so slight an obstacle should not stand in the way of pressing her goodwill towards me.
I began to like this fat, silly lady, who showed her gums so unbecomingly when she smiled, and to wonder at her position in the household.
The door opened yet again, and in came my first acquaintance, the gentleman in the grey suit.
I was growing more and more confused with each fresh arrival, and dimly wondered how long it would be before I fell off the hard yellow sofa from sheer weariness. The strange faces surged before me, an indistinguishable mass; the strange voices reached me, meaningless and incoherent, through a thick veil.
"She is very tired," some one said in French; and not long after this I was led across half a dozen rooms to a great bedroom, where, without taking in any details of my surroundings, I undressed, went to bed, and fell asleep till the next morning.