Vivienne and Judy were having afternoon tea in their room, when the lame girl, who was amusing herself by twirling round and round on the piano stool while she ate her bread and butter, burst into a cackling laugh. “Oh, Vivienne, mamma said such a hateful thing about you—so hateful that I must tell you.”
Vivienne laid her head on her chair back and calmly looked at her.
“She said,” went on Judy with a chuckle, “she said, ‘Throw a handkerchief over her head and you will see the peasant.’”
Vivienne’s eyes glittered as they went back to the fire, and Judy continued, “It was such a detestable thing to say, because she knows that you are more like a princess than a peasant. Fancy comparing you to one of the Frenchwomen that one sees down in the market.”
Vivienne made no reply to her, and Judy went on talking and grumbling to herself until she heard footsteps in the hall outside.
“Who is that coming up here?” she said, peering through the half-open door. “As I am a miserable gossip, it’s Stargarde at last, the mysterious Stargarde, about whom your serene highness is so curious.”
Vivienne rose and gazed straight before her in polite fascination. Mr. Armour stood in the doorway, and behind him was a magnificently developed woman who might be any age between twenty-five and thirty. She held her cap in her hand, and the little curls in her masses of golden hair shone round about her head like an aureole. A mantle muffled the upper part of her figure, but Vivienne caught a glimpse of a neck like marble and exquisitely molded hands.
The girl as she stood criticising her visitor did not know that there was anything wistful in her attitude, she had not the remotest idea of bidding for sympathy; therefore it was with the utmost surprise that she saw Stargarde’s arms outstretched, and the mantle spreading out like a cloud and descending upon her.
“Poor little girl—shut up in the house this lovely weather,” and other compassionate sentences she heard as she went into the cloud and was enveloped by it.
When she emerged, shaking her head and putting up her hands to her coils of black hair to feel that they were not disarranged, Stargarde was smiling at her.