Robin rose also. She wondered if she ought not to hold out her hand. Perhaps he saw her slight movement. He himself made none.
“I remember you objected to shaking hands as a child,” he said, with an impersonal civil smile, and the easy punctiliousness of his bow made it impossible for her to go further.
CHAPTER XXV
Some days before this the Duchess of Darte had driven out in the morning to make some purchases and as she had sat in her large landau she had greatly missed Miss Brent who had always gone with her when she had made necessary visits to the shops. She was not fond of shopping and Miss Brent had privately found pleasure in it which had made her a cheerful companion. To the quiet elderly woman whose life previous to her service with this great lady had been spent in struggles with poverty, the mere incident of entering shops and finding eager salesmen springing forward to meet her with bows and amiable offers of ministration, was to the end of her days an almost thrilling thing. The Duchess bought splendidly though quietly. Knowing always what she wanted, she merely required that it be produced, and after silently examining it gave orders that it should be sent to her. There was a dignity in her decision which was impressive. She never gave trouble or hesitated. The staffs of employees in the large shops knew and reveled in her while they figuratively bent the knee. Miss Brent had been a happy satisfied woman while she had lived. She had died peacefully after a brief and, as it seemed at first, unalarming illness at one of her employer’s country houses to which she had been amiably sent down for a holiday. Every kindness and attention had been bestowed upon her and only a few moments before she fell into her last sleep she had been talking pleasantly of her mistress.
“She is a very great lady, Miss Hallam,” she had said to her nurse. “She’s the last of her kind I often think. Very great ladies seem to have gone out—if you know what I mean. They’ve gone out.”
The Duchess had in fact said of Brent as she stood a few days later beside her coffin and looked down at her contentedly serene face, something not unlike what Brent had said of herself.
“You were a good friend, Brent, my dear,” she murmured. “I shall always miss you. I am afraid there are no more like you left.”
She was thinking of her all the morning as she drove slowly down to Bond Street and Piccadilly. As she got out of her carriage to go into a shop she was attracted by some photographs of beauties in a window and paused to glance at them. Many of them were beauties whom she knew, but among them were some of society’s latest discoveries. The particular photographs which caught her eye were two which had evidently been purposely placed side by side for an interesting reason. The reason was that the two women, while obviously belonging to periods of some twenty years apart as the fashion of their dress proved, were in face and form so singularly alike that they bewilderingly suggested that they were the same person. Both were exquisitely nymphlike, fair and large eyed and both had the fine light hair which is capable of forming itself into a halo. The Duchess stood and looked at them for the moment spell-bound. She slightly caught her breath. She was borne back so swiftly and so far. Her errand in the next door shop was forgotten. She went into the one which displayed the photographs.
“I wish to look at the two photographs which are so much alike,” she said to the man behind the counter.
He knew her as most people did and brought forth the photographs at once.