Tossing her hair back she sprang forward and kissed her reflection in the glass, a long, greeting, grateful kiss, and her eyes blazed with passionate rapture. Then she slowly raised her arms above her head, every pulse throbbing with delicious exultation, every nerve leaping with triumph and hope, every artery a river of tumultuous, victorious, springing life.
CHAPTER IX.
HELEN SIMMS.
A year later Hermia was sitting by her library fire one afternoon when the butler threw back the tapestry that hung over the door and announced Helen Simms. Hermia rose to greet her visitor with an exclamation of pleasure that had in it an accent of relief. She had adopted Helen Simms as the friend of her new self; as yet, but one knew the old Hermia. Helen was so essentially modern and practical that restless longings and romantic imaginings fled at her approach.
Miss Simms, as she entered the room, her cheeks flushed by the wind, and a snow-flake on her turban, was a charming specimen of her kind. She had a tall, trim, slender figure, clad in sleek cloth, and carried with soldierly uprightness. Her small head was loftily and unaffectedly poised, her brown hair was drawn up under her quiet little hat with smoothness and precision, and a light, severe fluff adorned her forehead. She had no beauty, but she had the clean, clear, smooth, red-and-ivory complexion of the New York girl, and her teeth were perfect. She looked like a thoroughbred, splendidly-groomed young greyhound, and was a glowing sample of the virtues of exercise, luxurious living, and the refinement of two or three generations.
“What do you mean by moping here all by yourself?” she exclaimed, with a swift smile which gave a momentary flash of teeth. “You were to have met me at Madame Lefarge’s, to have tried on your new gown. I waited for you a half-hour, and in a beastly cold room at that.”
“I beg your pardon,” replied Hermia, with sudden contrition, “but I forgot all about it—I may as well tell the bald truth. But I am glad to see you. I am blue.”
Helen took an upright chair opposite Hermia’s, and lightly leaned upon her umbrella as if it were a staff. “I should think you would be blue in this ‘gray ancestral room,’” she said. “It looks as if unnumbered state conspiracies and intrigues against unhappy Duncans had been concocted in it. I do not deny that it is all very charming, but I never come into it without a shiver and a side-glance at the dark corners.”
She looked about her with a smile which had little fear in it.