"How much will your dressmaker take off her account?" she said, for she always preferred coming to the point, to beating about the bush, and she was used to these periodical attacks on her pocket.
"Thirty pounds would do. Then I could order something for—"
"Don't," said Gay, who had drawn out her cheque-book, and begun to write. "Lossie," she said half sadly, as she came forward, and handed her cousin a slip of pink paper, "why do you bother so much about the outside of you? Be rice, be natural, be kind; don't talk scandal—men hate it—" She paused and blushed; unconsciously she was trying to teach Lossie those pretty manners and ways of her own that men cherish so deeply, and to which their homage, so long forgotten among brusque women, inevitably sprang.
"I can't be a dear little charmer like you, Gay, if you mean that," said Lossie, as she put the cheque away, and warmly thanked its giver, though after all it was no more than her right. Those who had, ought to share with those who had not, and our Labour Members' vigorous contention that people who have money, should be forced to provide for those who have spent theirs, also for those who can't and won't work, expressed her opinion exactly.
And yet the cheque did not make Lossie as happy as usual. In sudden flashes, now and then, she realised her position—saw over. Beauty she had, and brains, but up to now, and she was twenty-seven, they had brought her little good. She had received no really good offers, but it never seemed to strike her that her extreme expensiveness in dress and tastes had a good deal to do with it, and her absorbing (and patent) passion for Mackrell still more. To be sure there was that ridiculous George Conant, at present the favourite nephew and heir of the enormously rich Mrs. Elkins, but as the old lady made a new will every three months or so, and he might do something specially idiotic to annoy her, it would be madness to bet on that chance.
Poor Frank would be safe, and less trouble—anyway, she had no intention of drifting into that grey life in which one is first with nobody, or worse still (for Aunt Lavinia's pension died with her), forming one of that hopeless army of incapables that is always "looking for something," and helpless, unbraced, expects a heaven-born post to fit it, not that it should learn to fit itself for a post.
Lossie sighed impatiently, and glanced across at Gay, who sat, needlework in hand, in the charming room that was feminine like herself, and fresh and sweet, with nothing whatever about her to suggest the Trotting or Race-course, and, as often before, she tried to analyse the irresistible charm of her cousin.
"A good sort" (from the women), "a darned good sort" (from the men), was the invariable verdict passed upon her, and even taking up vulgar Trotting, and doing things men hate their women to do, had not affected her popularity. "The first time you see Gay Lawless you'll hardly think her good-looking, the second you'll fall in love with her, and the third you'll ask her to marry you!" Lossie had once heard one man tell another—but as to beauty! It was true that Gay's eyes had a curious power of refraction, so that shades of feeling chased each other over them like shadows on a clear pool, and her skin had the clear transparency that goes with hair that not so long ago, as Gay confidentially told her men friends, was "carrots," though the laugh with which she said it, showing the loveliest little white teeth in the world, usually inclined the person addressed to a quite contrary opinion. But compared with what Lossie found in her own mirror, Gay had no good looks at all.
"I half expected Mr. Rensslaer," said Gay, glancing at the clock.
"He's not a beauty," said Lossie, with some irrelevance, but he was no favourite of hers, and, on his part, he had never found reason to alter his summing up of her on the first occasion they had met.