Someone appeared at the door of the communicating rooms. Madame Simone gave her orders in a few sharp staccato French sentences. After that Letty and Steptoe found themselves sitting on two of the gilded chairs, unexpectedly alone. The other ladies had returned to their tasks. Madame Simone had gone back to the place whence they had summoned her. Nothing had happened. It seemed to be all over. They waited.
“Ain’t she goin’ to show us nothin’?” Letty whispered anxiously. “They always do.”
Steptoe was puzzled but recommended patience. He couldn’t think that Madame could have begun so kindly, only to go off and leave them in the lurch. It was not what he had looked for, any more than she; but he had always found patient waiting advantageous.
Perhaps ten minutes had gone by when a new figure wandered toward them. Strutted would perhaps be the better word, since she stepped like a person for whom stepping means a calculation. She was about Letty’s height, and about Letty’s figure. Moreover, she was pretty, with that haughtiness of mien which turns prettiness to beauty. What was most disconcerting was her coming straight toward Letty, and standing in front of her to stare.
Letty colored to the eyes—her deep, damask flush. The insult was worse than anything offered by Mrs. Courage; for Mrs. Courage after all was only a servant, and this a young lady of distinction. Letty had never seen anyone dressed with so much taste, not even the stars as they came on the studio lot in their everyday costumes. Indignant as she was she could appreciate this delicate seal-brown cloth, with its bits of gold braid, and darling glimpses of sage-green wherever the lining showed indiscreetly. The hat was a darling too, brown with a feather between brown and green, the one color or the other according as the wearer moved.
If it hadn’t been for this cool insolence.... And then the young lady deliberately swung on her heel, which was high, to move some five or six yards away, where she stood with her back to them. It was a darling back—with just enough gold braid to relieve the simplicity, and the tiniest revelation of sage-green. Letty admired it the more poignantly for its cold contempt of herself.
Steptoe was not often put out of countenance, but it seemed to have happened now. “I can’t think,” he 121 murmured, as one who contemplates the impossible, “that the French madam can ’ave been so civil to begin with, just to go and make a guy of us.”
“If all her customers is like this––” Letty began.
But the young lady of distinction turned again, stepping a few paces toward the back of the room, swinging on herself, stepping a few paces toward the front of the room, swinging on herself again, and all the while flinging at Letty glances which said: “If you want to see scorn, this is it.”