LA MARQUISE.
"La Marquise d'Ochtè is attending Madame Brune in the salon au cinquième étage," announced a very excited little housemaid, who was supposed to speak English for the benefit of the American pensionnaires at Maison Pace. "Madame Pace is some time gone at the boucher, not expecting callers at so early heur. La Marquise demanded not Madame Pace; but said very distinctment 'Madame Brune et sa fille'."
"Very well, Alphonsine, thank you so much. My daughter and I will come down immediately," said Mrs. Brown, smiling at the agitation of the little maid. Mrs. Pace had evidently given her servants to understand the importance her pension gained from the visits of a marchioness.
"Milly, Milly, how I have longed to see you," and the Marquise d'Ochtè rose from her seat and clasped her one-time friend and beloved cousin in a warm embrace. "And this is your daughter? Goodness, child, you look like me,—at least, like me when I was young!"
Molly knew in the first second of greeting that she was going to like this cousin, and Mrs. Brown was delighted to see in the marchioness the same Sally Bolling of thirty years ago. She was like Molly in a way, but it was hard to realize that Molly could ever be quite so buxom as this middle-aged cousin. She was a very large woman with an excellent figure for her weight, and hair a little darker than Molly's with no silver threads showing so far.
"I pull 'em out if they dare to so much as show their noses. They say forty will come in when you pull out one, but then I'll make my maid pull out forty, if it kills me in the pulling," she declared when Mrs. Brown remarked on it in the course of their inventory of each other. "My Jean declares he got caught in my hair and could not get away, and I mean still to keep him."
"I am afraid I would snatch myself bald-headed if I tried to pull all of my gray hairs out," laughed Mrs. Brown; "but, Sally, you are exactly the same girl who left Kentucky ages ago; there is just a little more of you."
"A little more of me, indeed! There is about twice as much of me as there used to be. But, Milly, you are exactly the same; there is not even any more of you. You look much more like a member of the French nobility than I do."
The marchioness did not look in the least French, but more like a well-groomed English woman. Her dark brown suit was very simple and well made, and her shoes bore the earmarks of an English boot maker, fitting her perfectly but with low heels, broad toes and heavy soles. Her hat was the only French touch about her, and that could have been concocted in no spot in the world but Paris, so perfectly did it blend with her hair and furs.
"Now tell me all about yourselves and what you are going to do with your winter, and we can 'reminisce' another time. We must hurry before Henny Pace gets back from market. I came early so as to avoid her and see you a moment alone. She is a kind, good soul and I am really very fond of her for auld lang syne, but you might as well try to hold a conversation with a bumping bug in the room as Henrietta. Firstly, do you mean to stay here?"