“I guess we understand one another, and there’s no more to be said. Now for one hour by the clock you’ve to shut your eyes and be quiet. Go to sleep if you can! I’ll wake you up in time for the prinking.”
Elma buried her head in the cushions and shed a silent tear. Cornelia was laughing at her, and she could not bear it. Her mind, trained to habits of introspection, began at once to wonder if she were really pretending, as the other seemed to think; if the agitation which she felt was not so much the result of the accident, as caused by the excitement of seeing Geoffrey Greville, and meeting his ardent glances. The prospect of remaining in the same house and of meeting him from hour to hour was incredible but delightful, yet Elma would give it up a hundred times over, rather than accept hospitality under false pretences. Was it her duty to insist upon returning home? Should she announce that she felt so much refreshed by her rest that there was no longer any reason why she should be treated as an invalid? The sinking feeling of disappointment which followed this inspiration was easily mistaken for a physical symptom. Yes. She was ill! It was quite true that she felt faint. Surreptitiously she felt her own pulse, and was convinced that its beat had increased. She thought of the expression of Geoffrey’s eyes as he lifted her from the ground—blushed, and felt certain that she was feverish. Yes, she would stay! It would be foolish and ungrateful to refuse. Mother had always warned her not to run risks where health was concerned...
A soft little sigh of contentment sounded through the room. If Elma had been fifteen years younger this was the moment at which a warm, sticky little thumb would have crept into her mouth, as a sign that earthly cares were swept aside, and that she had resigned herself to slumber; being a young woman of sweet and twenty, she snoodled her head into the pillow, and fell fast asleep.
For over an hour she slept, and woke to find Cornelia leaning back in her chair watching her, while the book lay closed on her lap. For a moment she hardly recognised the face which she had always seen animated, self-confident, and defiant, but which was now softened into so sweet a tenderness. A lightning thought flashed through her mind that it was thus Cornelia would look, if ever in the time to come she watched by the bedside of her own child. She smiled lazily, and stretched out a caressing hand.
“Why, Cornelia, have you been sitting there all the time? How dull for you! How long have I been asleep?”
“It’s half after five, so we must be lively, if I am to get back in time to settle the old ladies, and get ready for dinner. Hustle now! I’ll help you to shed your own duds, and then pipe up for the transformation! That tea-gown’s the limit! I thought I knew the last thing there was to learn about clothes, but I wouldn’t be above going in for a course of too-ition from the woman who fixed those frills! This is going to be an historic occasion for you, my friend. Your sinful nature is kinder dead to the joys of frillies, but there’s going to be a big awakening! The woman isn’t born who could come out of that gown the same as she went in!” She lifted the blue serge skirt over Elma’s head, and surveyed the plain hem with tragic eyes. “It’s pretty hard luck to be born a woman instead of a man, but it softens it some to have a swirl of frills round one’s ankles! If I’d to poke around with a hem, I’d give up altogether.—Now, then, sit still where you are, while I fix your hair! I’m going to do it a way of my own, that will be more comfy for leaning up against cushions. If you don’t like it you can say so, but I guess you will.”
She brushed the soft light tresses to the top of Elma’s head, and arranged them skilfully in massed-up curls and loops. From time to time she retreated a step or two as if to study the effect, returning to heighten a curl, or loosen the sweep over the forehead. In reality she was reproducing, as nearly as possible, the coiffure of one of the beauties in miniature hanging on the drawing-room walls behind the couch on which Elma would probably pass the evening. It might chance that the eyes of mother or son would observe the likeness between the two girlish faces, a fact which could not but score in Elma’s favour!
When the dainty white robe was fastened, and each ribbon and lace patted into its place by skilful fingers, then, and not till then, Elma was allowed to regard herself in the glass. It was a startling revelation of her own beauty, but the predominant feeling was not elation, but distress. Accustomed as she was to a puritan-like simplicity, Elma felt almost shocked at her own changed appearance. The sweeping folds of the gown gave additional height to her figure, her neck looked like a round white pillar above the square of lace; the quaintly arranged tresses gave a touch of piquancy to her gentle features. An involuntary and quite impersonal admiration was followed by quick repentance.
“Cornelia, I can’t! I can’t go down like this! I daren’t do it. I look like an actress—so dressed up! Just as if I wanted to look nice!”
Cornelia sniffed eloquently.