A tap at the outer door, and Kathleen put in her head, asking:
“Shall I light the gas for you, Miss—Miss—”
“Ethel,” returned her young mistress, smiling. “Not here, Katty, but in the bedroom. And turn it quite low. The moon will be rising presently, and I shall sit here till I see it.”
“If you’ll excuse me, miss, but you do look lovely in that white dress and them pearls,” said the girl, stepping in and turning an admiring glance upon the graceful figure at the window. “They was just made for the likes of you, wid your shining eyes, your pink cheeks, and purty red lips, an’ your skin that’s the color o’ cream an’ soft an’ fine an’ smooth as a babby’s.”
Ethel shook her head and laughed.
“Ah, Katty, you have been kissing the blarney-stone,” she said. “My cheeks are pale and my skin dark compared with yours. And your sunny brown tresses are far prettier, to my thinking, than my own darker locks.”
“Och, Miss Ethel, an’ it’s mesilf that would thrade aven and throw in a thrifle to boot!” replied Kathleen, with a blush and a smile. “But it’s attendin’ to yere orders I should be, and it’s proud I’ll be to attind to ’em if ye’ll be plazed to ring whin I’m wanted,” she added as she courtesied and left the room.
“They are certainly very beautiful,” thought Ethel, looking down at the pearls on her wrist gleaming out whitely in the darkening twilight, “the dress, too, with its exquisite lace. And I—I seem to have lost my identity with the laying off of my mourning!” And a tear fell, a sigh was breathed to the memory of those for whom she had worn it.
“Yet why should I grieve any longer for them, dear as they were to me?” she thought; “for them, the blessed dead whom I would not for worlds recall to earth.”