Gabrielle greets her effusively.
“Dieu merci, Fanchette! Now I may hope to get my hair done. Zai, don’t wait for me to go down. Have Miss Trixy and Miss Mirabelle gone down yet, Fanchette?”
“Just this moment, mademoiselle.”
“And how do they look?”
“Miss Trixy is ravissante. She was very difficile, nothing would please her. I tried coiffure à la Ninon, or ringlets à la Cascade, or the simple plaits English mees likes.”
“And which has she gone down as—Ninon or the Cascade?” Gabrielle asks with a smile.
“Not one or the other, mademoiselle. She would have her head done with the weeds of the waves, and also des petites bêtes, I don’t know what you call them, fastened into it like a syrène.
“Ah, oui! I understand. She is a mermaid to-night, with sea-weeds and shell-fish. I can well imagine Mademoiselle Trixy difficile; being an angel to men and an angel to one’s femme-de-chambre are two different things. Fanchette, make me very beautiful to-night.”
“Mais, oui! Mademoiselle has the grand capability to be so.” And in a few moments her skilful fingers have gathered up Gabrielle’s lustrous tresses into a sort of crown, which becomes her well.
“How nice I should look in the Delaval coronet,” Gabrielle thinks, as she admires herself in the glass, with a truthfulness befitting a better cause.