“If I fail to fit it,” I said, “call me an impostor.”
But dismay was in my heart. What did all this suggested elaborate outfit, from shoes to nightgear, portend? Surely something more than a flying visit. “Perhaps you had better write me out a list,” I said weakly.
She frowned a little; then proceeded to comply. It was a shorter list, when finished, than I had dared to hope.
“Now,” I said, with the thing in my hand, “I will pay for these articles, and bring you the bills, and you can settle with me. I shall lock you in, you understand, and leave word with the Concierge that nobody is to be sent up; and if, in spite of that, accident should bring a knock to my door, you are not to answer it—not to respond to any voice, unless by chance it should be my step-sister’s.”
She nodded. “The important thing is, I hope your choice will justify your claim to be thought an artist. But we shall see.”
To be thought an artist! I ran down the stairs like an infuriated lamplighter.
CHAPTER IV
I had Fifine’s figure in my mind’s eye as I made my purchases. The practice of mentally revisualising things once seen left me in no doubt as to its proportions. It was somewhat developed for a girl of nineteen, but I had reason to believe that a certain precosity was not suggested in her shape alone. There was a hint also of mental ripeness beyond her years, oddly irreconcilable with the passive front she maintained—a readiness of retort which I had found exhilarating, and hoped yet to provoke to my greater confusion and diversion.
The young ladies of the Magasin du Louvre made themselves very merry over my commission. I thought it best to confide one section of Fifine’s list to the expert judgment of the lingerie department, with directions only that the articles specified were to be of the best. The dresses, the stockings and the shoes, with some small fanciful accessories, I made it my own business to select. After all, a Frenchman would do these things unabashed, so why should I demur.
A sweet young sylph—libelled, as I have since learned, under the name of “mannequin”—offered, for my behoof, to exhibit on her own jimp and faultless figure the one or two frocks I preferred for consideration. Nothing loth, since I was agent for a Countess, I stood and thrilled to see this vision of grace pose in beauty before me, while I considered her points with all the fastidious brutality of an Oriental slave-buyer. She stood as undisturbed as Fifine herself, a little arch challenge on her lips, and I had to summon up all my resolution in order to resist, in the face of that pretty allurement, the conquest of my individual taste and judgment.