“You are very good,” Sidney said to her as one might praise a willing child.
“Light heart makes light foot,” said Temperance oracularly. Mabella smiled brightly and blushed.
Vashti standing with the dark folds of her cloak slipping down about her superb figure, noted the blush, and connecting it with the eagerness of Mabella’s aid to Temperance concluded that Mabella was casting eyes upon Sidney. Vashti’s eyes grew deep and sombre. A pale smile curled her sculptural lips; such a smile as Mona Lisa wears in her portraits.
Mabella’s coquetries against her power! Bah! a sneer flickered across her countenance, erasing expression from it as acid cleans metal of stain. But she was shaken with silent rage at the mere idea. She let her white lids fall over her full eyes for a moment; then crossed to where Sidney stood. She always seemed to move slowly, because of her long gliding paces, which in reality bore her swiftly forward. She looked into his eyes. “I am so sorry,” she said—her voice, always beautiful, seemed to his greedy ears more than exquisite now—
“I am so sorry you are not well. You will go upstairs, won’t you, and take what Temperance sends you? You are not suffering?”
Her wonderful eyes seemed wells of womanly concern for him. They searched his as if eager to be assured that there was no other ill troubling him than was apparent. A happy tremor thrilled his heart.
“I shall be quite well, I hope, in the morning,” he said. “I have bad headaches sometimes. This is the beginning of one I suppose.”
He shivered with cold.