“Yes,” said Vestalia, with a meditative look, “it would be a pity for you to put them on. They would detract from your face. It is very beautiful as it is—for a dark style.”
“Sometimes I feel that I am almost tired of being dark,” confessed Adele. “Your hair is the most wonderful thing I ever saw. I could see that your gentleman-friend at the Museum admired it immensely.”
“Oh yes, he said so repeatedly,” Vestalia replied, with a demure display of pleasure at the recollection.
Again there was a little pause. Then Miss Skinner essayed another opening. “Your name—Peaussier—would indicate French extraction,” she remarked. “And French people are so very dark, as a rule, aren’t they? My mother was a Creole—from Louisiana, you know—and I suppose that accounts for my colour.”
“Well, my mother was Scotch,” explained Vestalia, “and they are sandy.”
“The Scotch gentleman that you were with at the Museum—he was decidedly a dark man,” suggested Adele, with a casual manner.
“Now that I think of it, so he was,” said Vestalia.
The measured and ceremonious ticking of the expensive clock on the mantel had the silence to itself for a space, while the two ladies looked at each other.
“So you won’t tell me anything?” Miss Skinner exclaimed at last.
“The trouble is, don’t you see, that I am quite in the dark as to what you want to know. If you will tell me just what was in your father’s pockets, I can judge then what gaps exist in your information.”