When at last she turned from her lengthy contemplation, Frances was seated, flushed and trembling a little, but sedate in her ample white habit, and Rosamund was kneeling on the floor beside her, their hands tightly locked together.
It always struck Frances afterwards with a curious sense of incongruity that her first words, after that prolonged gaze, should have been uttered in a strangely shaking little voice:
“Oh, Rosamund, you’ve got on new clothes that I’ve never seen before!”
It was the odd, trivial expression of the enormous interval that lay between their life together and the new evolution of Frances.
Then Lady Argent kissed them both and said:
“My dearest child, you look just exactly the same, and yet so utterly different, and the habit and everything—so absolutely natural to see you in it, and so very strange, dear—you know what I mean. I never was so glad of anything in my life, only, of course, one knows there is no joy without sacrifice, and, my dear, you really look better than I’ve ever seen you. Are you quite well?”
“Are you happy?” asked Rosamund.
“Oh, yes,” Frances replied fervently to both questions. “I’m so happy—it’s everything I ever thought it would be—only better. And I’m very, very well. I haven’t seen myself in a looking-glass, but they all say I’m fatter than when I came.”
“So you are,” said Rosamund doubtfully. “Your face is much rounder, but you’re very black under your eyes, darling.”
“Am I?” replied Frances laughing a little, and instinctively putting up her hand to the tell-tale eyes.