"No," she answered shortly; "blue is horribly unbecoming to me. I have not a faultless fair complexion, you know."
"I didn't know complexion had any influence on the choice of furniture," said Gordon, smiling, and quite unconscious of the feelings his careless remark had excited.
"Didn't you? No, I don't suppose men understand those things. Read the Duchesse d'Abrantes, and you'll be wiser."
The obnoxious blue-and-silver had been replaced by the freshest and prettiest of chintzes; and the apartment, if less splendid, was even more elegant and inviting. Traces of Hester's intellectual tastes were to be seen about it; and Hester herself was no insignificant ornament. The development of her beauty had been steadily going on, and now the new mistress of Middlemeads need not have greatly feared competition with the former. With all the accessories of wealth and refinement around her, Hester Frere was a beautiful woman to the most critical eye--more beautiful indeed to the critical than to the careless; for hers was the beauty of form and expression, the accuracy of feature and symmetry of form, the correct loveliness which is less sympathetic but more satisfying than the lighter, more brilliant, and more striking kinds of beauty.
"And you actually had Mr. Thacker's sisters down here for a month, Hester? How very good of you! Were they very dreadful?"
Hester smiled. "You forget," she said, "that I lived all my life among similar people, and am of them. You can't expect me to admit that they are dreadful."
"O, I know all that; you need not talk like that to me, Hester, or pretend that you ever were like the Thacker girls. They are like human peonies. I shall never forget Rebecca's parasol, with a pink-coral handle, and her opera-cloak with amber buttons."
"They are very fond of bright colours and jewelry, certainly. I don't dispute that, or hope to correct it; but they are old friends, and I am very constant to them."
"So you are to all friends, Hester, and in that wonderfully unlike most women of the world; and you know the world as well as any one, I think. But talking of old friends and constancy, what about that silly girl Streightley's sister, that Katharine, and you too, Hester, bored one to death with last year?"
"She is coming to me shortly, to stay with me while Gordon goes to the Scotch moors; and I shall keep her until we go to town. Then she is to be married early in the winter."