In a ground-floor "parlor" at the Brunswick, late the following afternoon—a parlor that was heavily decorated and brilliant with electric light, Grace fell into Mrs. Frampton's expansive embrace. It was a bitterly cold day, and the cheek which her niece pressed seemed frozen. It belonged to a short, stout woman, still almost as vigorous as at twenty, with iron-gray hair, that rose in crisp waves, and broke over the broad, prominent forehead, indicating stubborn natural force. Swift black eyes, a healthy color, fine white teeth, told the same tale of strong vitality. The expanded nostrils, and full mobile mouth, showed perhaps other, but not contradictory, characteristics.
Impossible to doubt that this was a clever, dominant, possibly at times a violent woman; attractive to some, to others a terror and a bête noir. Voluble, beyond the limits of discretion, yet rarely foolish; impulsive as a child; loving and hating with equal intensity; yet prudent, worldly-wise, humorous, and quick-sighted, it was not difficult to form an idea, more or less just, of Mrs. Frampton in five minutes' conversation. But then, as her nephew said, "Aunt Susan always lets herself go." It was that quality of "letting herself go" which made her so entertaining a companion.
She spoke rapidly, in a high but not unmusical voice, holding her niece out at arm's-length after embracing her, while she scanned the girl's countenance.
"You look well, my child! This horrible climate agrees with you, then? I have been shrivelling up visibly every hour since I landed. And then the awful heat of these furnaces! I thought I should be roasted alive in the railway-carriage coming here! How can you stand it?"
"I grin and bear it as well as I can, Aunt Su. And as to the climate, I like this dry cold a great deal better than the damp and fog of London."
She shrugged her shoulders. "'Quel drôle de goût!' as the irreverent Frenchman said when some one spoke of the Jews as 'God's chosen people.' Mordy has been talking the same nonsense. As if the London climate was not good enough for any living creature, except, perhaps, an asthmatic poodle! My nerves are all rasped here. I hate it."
"Well, aunty, we won't rasp you more by saying anything about the climate, but we mean to make you like the country very much."
"Never!" she cried, in a melodramatic tone. "Except the Hurlstones' house, everything I have seen is hideous. Those dreadful streets! You didn't say half enough about those dreadful New York streets. I felt as if every bone in my body was dislocated, when I drove through them! And then their way of spitting about one! There was one man who actually aimed across me at a spittoon! Pray, have you got accustomed to that?"
"I never see it," returned Grace, with a smile. "You know I am one of those stupid but happy people who don't see ugly things, unless they are thrust under their very nose."