The doctor laughed aloud.
"You will never make a woman of fashion, Millicent, as far as I understand such beings. A lady with a magnificent head of hair of her own carefully puts it out of sight and covers it with some one else's hair. I think the fashion most hateful, but my opinion of course matters little. Seriously speaking, Millicent, my mother must take you to a hair-dresser's, as something must be done; this beautiful, graceful, infantile head would never suit her ladyship."
Much against Millicent's will a hair-dresser was taken into their confidence.
"Could I not wear a cap?" asked Millicent, looking shyly at the magnificent coiffures of all colors.
"It would be very unbecoming," said the hair-dresser.
"A governess in a cap!" spoke Mrs. Chalmers. "No, that will not do at all."
"What does it matter?" thought the girl. "After all, my appearance will really interest no one."
And she submitted passively while a plain band of hair was chosen for her by the hair-dresser and Mrs. Chalmers. When it had been arranged, and she looked in the glass, she hardly recognized her face, the wavy golden hair had always given such a graceful, fairy-like character to her beauty. She looked many years older than she was—sad and subdued. The plain band of hair seemed quite to alter her face. Mrs. Chalmers kissed her.
"Never mind, my dear," she said; "you will soon be your own pretty self again," and the kindly words smote the young girl with deadliest pain. Her own self? Ah, no!—that self was dead, never to live again. It was but fitting that the old, graceful beauty—the girlish beauty Adrian had loved so dearly—should die with it.