“Not if it was the fashion,” laughed the Countess Helene; “she would insist on being original.”
“The Marquise has a lovely name,” remarked Mrs. McVeigh; “one could not imagine a weak or unattractive person called Judithe.”
“No; they could not,” agreed her friend, “it makes one think of the tragedy of Holofernes. It suggests the strange, the fascinating, the unusual, and––it suits Madame la Marquise.”
“Your approval is an unconscious compliment to me,” remarked the dowager, indulging herself in a tiny pinch of snuff and tapping the jeweled lid of the box; “I named her.”
“Indeed!” and Mrs. McVeigh smiled at the complacent old lady, while the Countess Helene almost stared. Evidently she, also, had heard the opinions concerning the young widow’s foreign extraction. Possibly the dowager guessed what was passing in her mind, for she nodded and smiled.
“Truly, the eyes did it. Though she was not so fully developed as now, those slumbrous, oriental eyes of hers suggested someway that beauty of Bethulia; the choice was left to me and so she was christened Judithe.”
“She voices such startlingly paganish ideas at times that I can scarcely imagine her at the christening font,” remarked the Countess.
“In truth her questions are hard to answer sometimes. But the heart is all right.”
“And the lady herself magnetic enough without the added suggestion of the name,” remarked Mrs. McVeigh; then she held up her finger as the Countess was about to 25 speak, for from the music room came the appealing legato notes of “Suwanee River,” played with great tenderness.
“What is it?” asked the dowager.