“One would think I intended to dazzle the crowd,” she muttered, “as if such things could do it.”
“Oh, madam! you are spoiling everything.”
Mrs. Lambert looked at herself drearily in the glass, her dress had lost it brilliancy—she seemed growing older.
“Put them on, again,” she said, holding out her white arms, as if the glittering jewelry held by her maid were manacles of iron. “Nothing seems to become me, to-night.”
“Indeed, madam, I never saw you look so lovely; no girl ever had an air like that.”
This professional flattery was received by the lady with a quick feeling of interest. She longed to believe the girl; longed to think that much of the freshness and dew of her youth remained.
“Ellen,” she said, with an appeal for truth in her words, and a piteous shrinking from it in her eyes, “no one will look on me with your partial eyes; suppose you had not seen me since I was—well, since I was married to Mr. Lambert, you remember that, just a chasm of so many years to leap over, would you find me so little changed then?”
“Indeed, ma’am, and I would!”
The girl spoke honestly; flattery had become second nature to her, and she believed every word of it.
Mrs. Lambert drew a soft, deep breath; she had lost faith in her own judgment, and it was pleasant to have her doubts swept away, even by the opinion of a menial. She drew on her gloves, and took up her fan, with a bouquet of tea-roses that old Storms had sent up.