She stood in front of her looking-glass that evening and, with hands that trembled with excitement, applied the "Magnolia Bloom" to her little brown face.
It never occurred to Jane-Anne that the way to use powder was to put it on and take it off again. That would have appeared to her a wasteful work of supererogation. She liberally bedaubed her face with the "snow-white" powder and anxiously regarded the result.
Her eyes looked very dark and large, and her eyebrows, what she had left of them, very black. It had rather an ageing effect on the whole, for so liberal had she been with the powder that her hair all round the temples was iron grey.
She was not quite sure whether she liked the effect or not. Even to her own prejudiced eyes it was a trifle bizarre and pronounced.
Where was the soft sheen of the butterfly's wing promised to "Amabelle"?
"Perhaps it looks different to other people," she reflected.
She crept to the foot of the stairs and listened.
Yes, her aunt was safely in the kitchen. She darted through the housekeeper's room and upstairs to Mr. Wycherly's door, and went in.
He looked up from the letter he was writing with his usual kindly smile of welcome, then suddenly he laughed.
"My dear Jane-Anne," he exclaimed, "have you been baking?"