From where she sat she could see her mistress's face, and behind her carved chair there were the blue china dragons and the deep heavy red curtains and a black oak table covered with little golden trays and glass jars and silver boxes.
Neither heat nor cold nor youth nor age had any effect upon Dorchester. No one knew how old she was, nor how long she had been with her mistress, nor her opinions or sentiments concerning anything in the world.
She was tall and gaunt and snapped her words as she might snap a piece of thread.
From Mrs. Newton and Norris downwards the servants were afraid of her. She made a confidant of no one, was supposed to have no emotions of any kind, absurd and fantastic stories were told of her; she was certainly not popular in the servants' hall and yet at a word from her anything that she requested was done.
With Miss Rand only was it understood that she had a certain friendly relationship; it was said that she liked Miss Rand.
Dorchester had witnessed the whole of the Duchess's career.
As she sat now in the shadow every now and again she looked up and glanced at that sharp white face and those thin hands. What a little body it was to have done so much, to have battled its way through such a career, to have fought and to have won so many conflicts! It seemed to Dorchester only yesterday that splendid time, when the Duchess had been queen of London. Dorchester also had been young then and had had an energy as enduring, a will as finely tempered as had her mistress.
What a character it had been then with its furies and its disciplines, its indulgences and its amazing restrictions, its sympathies and cold clodded cruelties, its tremendous sense of the dramatic moment so that again and again a position that had been nearly surrendered was held and saved. She had never been beautiful, always little and sharp and sometimes even wizened. But she gained her effects one way or another and beat beautiful and wise and wonderful women off the field.
And then sweeping down upon her had come disease. At first it had been fought and magnificently fought. But it was the horror of its unexpected ravages that had been so difficult to combat. She had never known when the pain would be upon her—it might seize her at any public moment and her retreat be compelled before the whole world. There had been doctors and doctors and doctors, and then operation after operation, but no one had done any good until Dr. Christopher had come to her, and now, for years, he had been keeping her alive.
Out of that very necessity of disease, however, had she dragged her drama. She had retired from the world, not as an old woman beaten by pain, but as a priestess might withdraw within her sanctuary or some great queen demand her privacy.