"'Then, too, I badly want to see this wonderful husband of yours. He won't be nice to me. A young husband, I think, is rarely devoted to his wife's old friends. But I shan't mind. I shan't resent it. I shall understand.'"
I stopped again to laugh up at Dimbie, who was leaning over me.
"She seems a very sensible woman," he remarked.
"There never was anyone quite so sensible as Miss Fairbrother," I returned. "She could even manage Peter in a fashion, and mother was devoted to her. One of the very cleverest things mother ever did was to find Miss Fairbrother."
"Please finish," said Dimbie, "or I shall miss my train."
"'Your charming present, for which many thanks, has already raised me some inches in the eyes of the women out here. For long they have been trying to persuade me into wearing a hair-frame. You will probably know the thing I mean—a round, evil-looking, hairy bolster, over which unpleasantness you comb your own hair, hoping to delude mankind into the belief that you have come of parentage of Samsonian characteristics. Now this beautiful jewelled comb of yours adds somewhat to my stature when, with an attempt—somewhat feeble, I fear—at high coiffured hair, I swim, like Meredith's heroines, or try to swim, into dinner. They almost pardon my lack of a bolster when their eyes rest upon such modishness. A little less spinster-governess, they think. And I translate their thought and smile.
"'Always your most affectionate,
"'EGOIST.'"
"Egoist, indeed!" I said musingly, as I folded the letter and took a photograph out of my desk—a photograph of a strong, smiling face, with low, broad forehead, over which the hair was parted on one side, clear, unflinching eyes, and large mobile mouth.
"Why don't you put her into a frame somewhere about the room?" asked Dimbie. "It is a fine face."
"Because I promised her she should never be on view. She imagined she was plain. I think clever people are as sensitive about their looks as stupid."