“It is an accomplishment,” said the Duchess thoughtfully. “Now, my woman either frizzes you like a Fiji, or leaves you dank and straight like a mermaid. Why does hair never wave naturally—out of a novel? It’s a question for a Convention. And men—dear idiots!—are such believers in the reality of ripples. There! I’ve been implored over and over again for ‘just that little bit with the wave in it’ to keep in a locket—hundreds and hundreds of times. I guess Cull’s wiser now; but once you’ve seen your husband’s teeth in a tumbler, you’ve entered into a Conjugal Reciprocity Convention: ‘Believe in me—not as much of me as really belongs to me, but as much as you see—and I’ll return the compliment!’ Yes, I guess I’ll take some S. and B. It’s an English accomplishment, and I’ve mastered it thoroughly. We Amurricans rinse out with Apollinaris or ice-water, which isn’t half so comforting, especially in trouble.”
And the Duchess heaved a butterfly’s sigh, which scarcely stirred her filmy laces, and smoothed her prettiest eyebrow with one exquisite finger-tip.
“Trouble!” exclaimed her friend. “My dear, you’re the happiest of women. Don’t try to persuade me that you’ve got a silent sorrow!”
“Not exactly a silent one, because I’m going to confide in you; but still it is a sorrow.” The Duchess confided one hand to her dearest friend’s consoling clasp, and wiped away a tear with a minute handkerchief that would not have dried half a dozen. “Perhaps Amurrican blood is warmer than English; but, anyhow, our family affections are vurry much more strongly developed over in the States than yours are here. And I had a letter from Momma by yesterday’s mail that would have melted a heart of rock.” She dried a second tear. “If Momma lives till the end of Creation,” she said, “she will never, never get over it. And I don’t wonder!”
“Darling, if it would really do you any good to tell me——” breathed Lady Sidonia.
“I tell all my friends,” said the Duchess with a sigh; “and they’re invariably of one opinion—that Momma was cruelly victimized.”
“She is——”
“Call her forty, dear. It would be just cruel to say anything more. People call me lovely and all those things,” said the Duchess candidly, “and I allow they’re correct. Well, compared with what Momma was at my age, I’m real ordinary.”
“Oh!”
“Frozen fact! And you can grasp the idea that when—in spite of every effort—Momma began to lose her figure and her looks, she felt it!”