“Pa’s a very susceptible little man!” she said tolerantly. “He has often amused me very much with his ‘amourettes.’ Sometimes it’s Mrs. Ross-Percival,—then he becomes suddenly violently juvenile and pays his devoirs to a girl of seventeen; I think he’d die straight off if he couldn’t believe himself still capable of conquering all hearts! And he’ll be able to get on in that line much better now that I’m drowned. I was ‘in the way.’”
“Silly old noodle!” said Sophy. “He’d better not come near me!—I should tell him a few plain truths of himself which he would not like!”
“Oh, he wouldn’t mind!” Diana assured her. “To begin with, he wouldn’t listen, and if he did, he would grin that funny little grin of his and say you were ‘over-wrought.’ That’s his great word! You can make no impression on Pa if he doesn’t want to be impressed. He has absolutely no feelings—I mean real feelings,—he has only just ‘impulses,’ of anger or pleasure, such as an animal has—and he doesn’t attempt to control either.”
They had by this time left the drawing-room, and were standing together in a charming little bedroom, furnished all in white and rose-colour.
“This is my ‘visitor’s room,’” said Sophy. ”And you can occupy it as long as you like. And I’ll bring you one of my Paris tea-gowns to slip on for dinner,—it’s lovely and you’ll look sweet!”
Diana smiled.
“I! Dear Sophy, you expect miracles!”
But Sophy was not so far wrong. That evening, Diana, arrayed in a gracefully flowing garment of cunningly interwoven soft shades, varying from the hue of Neapolitan violets to palest turquoise, and wearing her really beautiful bright hair artistically coiled on the top of her well-shaped head, was a very different looking Diana to the weary, worn and angular woman in severely cut navy serge who had presented the appearance of an out-of-place governess but a few hours before. If she could not be called young or beautiful, she was distinctly attractive, and Sophy Lansing was delighted.
“My dear, you pay for dressing!” she said, enthusiastically. “And—you mark my words!—you don’t look ‘mature’ enough for that Dr. Dimitrius!”