There is in Florence a plaque by one of the della Robbia; a long throated girl’s head leans from it, serenely looking down upon the world; a delicate head, with a clear brow, a pure cheek, a mouth of sad enchanting loveliness; Camelia’s head was like it; saint-like in contour, but with an added air, an air of merry irresponsibility. The outward corners of her eyes smiled into a long upward curve of shadow, her brows above them made a wing-like line, wings hovering extended, and a little raised. The upward tilt pervaded the corners of her mouth, a sad mouth, yet even in repose it seemed just about to smile, and its smile sliding to a laugh. The very moulding of her cheek and chin showed a tender gaiety. As for coloring it might have been the coloring of a pensive Madonna, so white was her skin, so palely gold her smooth thick hair. She was slender too, with the long narrow hands and feet of an Artemis, and on seeing her one thought of a maiden-goddess, of a St. Cecilia, and, without surprise over the incongruity, of an intimately modern young taster of life, whose look of pagan joyousness took neither herself nor other people seriously, said “que voulez-vous,” to all blame, and gently mocked puritanical earnestness.
Mrs. Fox-Darriel was plunged into the depths of an easy-chair, a type without hints and whispers to baffle and fascinate. She was thoroughly conventional and not in the least perplexing. Her elaborate head, a masterpiece of wave and coil and curl, rested against the high-chair back, its lustre a trifle suspicious where the light caught too gold a bronze on the sharp ripples.
She was considered a beauty, and her steely, regular face looked at one from every stationer’s shop in London. Miss Paton’s photographs were to be procured at no stationer’s, one among the many differences that distinguished her from her friend.
On Camelia’s “coming-out” in all the dryad-like freshness of her one and twenty years, Mrs. Fox-Darriel, smartest of the “smart,” kindly determined to “form” and “launch” her. She was very winning, and Camelia seemed very willing. But Mrs. Fox-Darriel soon recognized that she was being led—not leading, soon recognized that Camelia would never follow. The first defeat was at the corsetière’s visible symbol of the “forming” process. Under Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s eye, Miss Paton’s nymph-like slimness was measured for stays of all sorts and descriptions; Camelia, when the stays were done, surveyed her figure therein confined, with reflective rather than submissive silence.
The week after she went to Paris, and when she returned it was with a stayless wardrobe. Mrs. Fox-Darriel was fairly quelled as Camelia swept before her in these masterpieces of the Rue de la Paix.
“They are not æsthetic,” said Mrs. Fox-Darriel—“I own that—not a greenery-yallery whiff about them; nor too self-conscious; but my dear, why? Don’t you like my figure?”
Camelia turned candid eyes upon the accurate waist, the rigid curves and right angles. “I can’t say I do, Frances,” she owned, wherewith Mrs. Fox-Darriel winced a little. “I don’t think it looks alive, you know,” said Miss Paton. “Of course one must know how to dress one’s nonconformity. I think I have succeeded.” And Camelia went to court looking like a glorified Romney, with hardly a whalebone about her. Their future relationship was forecast by this declaration of independence. The stayless protégée conferred, did not receive lustre.
Inevitably Mrs. Fox-Darriel found herself revolving about the young beauty—a satellite among the other satellites, and more than Camelia herself was Mrs. Fox-Darriel impressed by Camelia’s effectiveness.
On this morning from the depth of her laziness she observed her young friend’s glances at the clock with some wondering curiosity; it was difficult to imagine a cause for the stirring of Camelia’s contemplative quiescence under country influences, but Mrs. Fox-Darriel was quick to see the faintest ripple of change, and to her well-sharpened acuteness the ripple this morning was perceptible.
“No new guests coming to-day?” she had asked, receiving a placid negative. “And what are you going to do?” she pursued, patting the regular outline of her fringe.