Although not, precisely, in her bed when the caller, shortly afterwards, was announced, Madame Ruiz was nevertheless as yet in deshabille.
“Tiresome man, what does he want to see me about?” she exclaimed, gathering around her a brocaded-wrap formed of a priestly cope.
“He referred to a lease, ma’am,” the maid replied.
“A lease!” Madame Ruiz raised eyes dark with spleen.
The visit of her agent, or man of affairs, was apt to ruffle her composure for the day: “Tell him to leave it, and go,” she commanded, selecting a nectarine from a basket of iced-fruits beside her.
Removing reflectively the sensitive skin, her mind evoked, in ironic review, the chief salient events of society, scheduled to take place on the face of the map in the course of the day.
The marriage of the Count de Nozhel, in Touraine, to Mrs. Exelmans of Cincinnati, the divorce of poor Lady Luckcock in London (it seemed quite certain that one of the five co-respondents was the little carrot-haired Lord Dubelly again), the last “pomps,” at Vienna, of Princess de Seeyohl née Mitchening-Meyong (Peace to her soul! She had led her life).... The christening in Madrid of the girl-twins of the Queen of Spain....
“At her time, I really don’t understand it,” Madame Ruiz murmured to herself aloud, glancing, as though for an explanation, about the room.
Through the flowing folds of the mosquito curtains of the bed, that swept a cool, flagged-floor, spread with skins, showed the oratory, with its waxen flowers, and pendant flickering lights, that burned, night and day, before a Leonardo saint with a treacherous smile. Beyond the little recess came a lacquer commode, bearing a masterly marble group, depicting a pair of amorous hermaphrodites amusing themselves, while above, against the spacious wainscoting of the wall, a painting of a man, elegantly corseted, with a Violet in his moustache, “Study of a Parisian,” was suspended, and which, with its pendant “Portrait of a Lady,” signed Van Dongen, were the chief outstanding objects that the room contained.
“One would have thought that at forty she would have given up having babies,” Madame Ruiz mused, choosing a glossy cherry from the basket at her side.