She was a sweet and interesting patient, and the charm of her face and figure was enhanced by the toilette in which Jacintha had arrayed her,—a dress all soft and white and foamy with silk muslin. A silver rope girdle was tied at one side and fell in two long, graceful tassels. Delicate antique lace fringed the slender wrists. Paul's quick eye observed that a small portion of the lace was torn off from the right sleeve. He wondered why the defect had not been repaired. A trifling circumstance, but one destined to recur with peculiar force at a later date.
This was not the costume she had worn on the night of her first meeting with him. Whence, then, did it come? Barbara seemed to divine his thoughts.
"I see you are observing my dress," she remarked. "It is a gift from Jacintha, drawn from an old chest in her wardrobe. It might have been expressly made for me, for it fits to a nicety without requiring the least alteration. Made for another, and yet suiting me to perfection. Is not that a singular coincidence?"
The fit of the dress did not strike Paul so much as the costliness of the material. He could not account for Jacintha's possession of such attire except on the supposition that it formed part of the flotsam and jetsam which supplied Lambro with his finery.
Again Barbara seemed to read his thoughts.
"No, it is not a gift of the sea; Jacintha assured me of that; otherwise I would not wear it. I have no liking for the clothing of the drowned." And then displaying a pair of pretty satin shoes, she added: "And these, too, are Jacintha's gift, and they fit as if my feet had been measured for them."
She turned to the open casement and surveyed the scene without.
"Ah! if I could but get into the air outside I should recover the sooner."
"Then come down to-morrow, and sit outside on the terrace."
"I am too weak to walk."