In the library she dropped desperately into a chair, and her glance ran nervously up and down the bookshelves, while her ears listened stealthily for echoes of the voice that was subordinating the house.
She had forgotten during these blissful months how beautiful her sister was. Some mysterious power in her, that found it easy to forget these things, had even led her memory to form quite a moderate estimate of Leonetta's charms in her absence,—even her sister's telling tricks with her hair had been completely banished from her mind.
Cleopatra rose and walked to the fire-place. On the mantelpiece, she knew, there was a photograph of herself at Leonetta's age. She felt she wanted to examine this record of her adolescence. She was groping for strength: she wished to fortify herself.
She drew the photograph towards her. No, she had not changed so very much. Only something inside her seemed to have grown less tense, less self-confident. Also, she had not had Leonetta's advantages,—advantages that she herself had been chiefly instrumental in securing for her younger sister. More arts than that of wielding the French tongue are learned in Paris. Apparently she never had arranged her hair quite as Baby arranged hers.
And then, all at once, the door opened, and she pushed the photograph violently from her, so that it fell with a clatter on the marble of the mantelpiece. It was her mother; and as the door opened and shut, the sound of Leonetta's voice upstairs swelled and died away again.
"Oh, it's you," Cleopatra cried, setting up the fallen frame.
Mrs. Delarayne walked to the window, spasmodically drew back a curtain, and then turned to face her daughter.
"She's amazingly high-spirited, isn't she?"
"Extraordinary!" Cleopatra exclaimed.
"Can you go with her to Mlle. Claude's to-morrow to order those frocks? You see, I have my Inner Light meeting in the afternoon."