Pauline glanced up coldly at the bleached head bending over the irons.
"Perhaps it does. Well—it's too late now even if you did care for it. I'll wear plenty of white around my neck and down the front; a cascade, jabot effect always suits me."
She wound a white scarf around her as she spoke, and bent an old black hat into a three-cornered shape on top of her head.
"There, my dear, there is the true French face, only you don't know it! If I could take you to my home, you would see—well, you would not see much beyond Henry and his eternal books, though they tell me he reads no more. I'm thinking of an old portrait I resemble."
Miss Clairville now sat on the bed, having relinquished the work of doing over the cloth skirt to her friend.
"Why are you keeping that red and black dress there, the theatre dress?
You will never need that, travelling!"
"No, I suppose not, only——"
Pauline eyed the dress. The family trait of acquisitiveness combined with a love of hoarding was asserting itself, and she could scarcely make up her mind to part with things when the time came. Besides, this dress carried her back to meetings with Ringfield, and again she saw the passionate admiration in his eyes as they talked in whispers on her balcony.
"Oh—a fancy of mine! I look well in it. I wore it when Henry was taken ill with the 'pic'."
With a loud shriek Miss Cordova dropped an iron on the floor.