'I don't exactly know whether she is pretty or not,' said Miss Montressor, 'and I take a great interest in your Mrs. Griswold: a lady who is so kind to her dependents as you make her out to be, and has the good sense and the good taste to be an admirer of the drama, is a legitimate subject of interest. I am sorry I did not see her face more distinctly; could you give me a sight of her now?'
'Now,' said Mrs. Jenkins, 'and in that dress, Clara! What would she think?'
'Why, my dear Bess, you do not imagine I want you to introduce me as Miss Montressor in this costume, and thus deliberately tell on myself the very thing which I have been impressing upon you must be kept profoundly secret? Not at all. But nursery visitors are not impossibilities in a house of this sort, I suppose? Couldn't I be a humble friend, a former fellow-servant somewhere--I suppose she thinks you were a servant before you came to her--who has just dropped in to have a look at baby?'
Mrs. Jenkins laughed. 'It would be good fun to have a private play of that sort on our own account, Clara, but unfortunately it cannot be done, for Mrs. Griswold is not in the nursery, and she is not likely to come to it. She caught cold last night at the play, and I could not persuade her not to get up this morning; but she felt very tired after breakfast, and I did persuade her to go and lie down: she is lying down in her own room, and the orders are that she is not to be disturbed for anything less important than a cable message from Mr. Griswold. She is always expecting one, though, as far as I can see, he is too sensible to waste money in them, and satisfies himself with writing by the mail--precious long letters they are, and doesn't she prize them just! However, she is lying down, and I cannot disturb her, above all by taking a stranger into the room; so you cannot see her at present.'
'O, never mind,' said Miss Montressor; 'so much the better that she is in the room. I shall have plenty of chances of seeing her. And now I should like a look at the house, Bess. It is the first house I have been in in New York, and I have a fancy for that sort of thing, and I like to get hints about carpets and curtains and drawing-room fixings. Can't you take me round--it is allowed, I suppose?'
'O, certainly, it is allowed,' said Mrs. Jenkins; 'we are under no restraint here. Come along up-stairs;' and the unsuspecting woman led Miss Montressor up the broad staircase to the white-and-gold folding-doors which gave access to the reception-rooms.
'What a simple creature it is,' thought Miss Montressor, 'that it has never occurred to her to ask me why I have so decidedly changed mv mind as to come here to see her, that being the very exact thing which I so positively assured her yesterday I could not do! Very handsome rooms, indeed,' she said aloud; 'fitted up in capital taste, and evidently quite regardless of expense. That's a fine picture on the wall opposite.'
She stepped across the floor rapidly, and stood still in front of it. It was a fine picture; an admirably executed portrait of Helen Griswold. The artist had painted her in an unconventional attitude, and the whole picture was pleasing to the general eye, interested in the work of art rather than in the likeness. It represented a slight, almost girlish figure, in soft white muslin robes slightly trimmed with lace, touched here and there with a knot of ribbon, a lace veil being loosely tied over the rich chestnut-brown hair, softening its masses, but hiding neither its richness nor its colour; the hands were clad in gardening-gloves; in the right was a large pair of scissors, just about to be applied to a rose-bush, one blossom of which was held apart from the stem by the left; a basket of roses already cut stood at the feet, and the scene of the picture was a conservatory, the original of which Miss Montressor had caught a glimpse of on the first floor of the house.
'That is Mrs. Griswold's portrait,' said Mrs. Jenkins, in reply to her sister's observation, 'and it is not at all flattered; so now you can see, if you had got a near view of her last night, you would have agreed with me about her beauty.'
'Yes,' said Miss Montressor slowly, 'that is a pretty face, and one cannot say of it, as one does of so many pretty faces, that there is nothing in it. I should think she was a very sensible woman, as well as a very kind-hearted one?'