"Is not there something rather queer about that person's looks, Miss Hereford?"
"In what way, Hill? She is good-looking."
"Well, her face struck me as being a curious one. What bright red hair she's got!—quite scarlet!—and I have heard say that red hair is sometimes deceitful. It is her own, though: for I looked at it in the sunlight outside."
"She puts me in mind of some one I have seen, and I cannot recollect who. It is not often you see red hair with those very light blue eyes."
"I never saw hair so shiny-red in all my life," returned Hill; "it looks just as if it had been burnished. She seems straightforward and independent. We shall see what the references say, if it comes to an inquiry."
"If you and Lady Chandos would but let me try the situation, Hill! I'm sure I should suit Mrs. Chandos as well as this lady would. I am only twenty; but I have had experience one way or another."
As if the words were a signal to drive her away, Hill walked off. I wrote to Madame de Mellissie, finishing a drawing, and got through the afternoon; going up to dress at half-past five.
Now that Lady Chandos was secluded, and Mr. Chandos my sole dinner companion, instinct told me that full dress was best avoided. So I put on my pretty pink barége, with its little tucker of Honiton lace at the throat, and its falling cuffs of Honiton lace at the wrists. Nothing in my hair but a bit of pink ribbon. I had not worn anything but ribbon since I came to Chandos.
The dinner waited and I waited, but Mr. Chandos did not come. I had seen a covered tray carried upstairs by Hickens; at the door of the west wing Hill would relieve him of it, the invariable custom. At the special request of Lady Chandos, Hickens alone went up there; the other men-servants never. Joseph carried up the meals for Mrs. Chandos and stayed to wait on her.
"Would you like to sit down without Mr. Chandos, Miss?" Hickens came to inquire of me when half-past six o'clock had struck.