“I know,” says Mrs. Pinckney. “She lived in England from the time she was sixteen, and of course twenty years away from one’s——”
“Does she claim to be only thirty-six?” exclaims Aunt Martha. “Why, she’s fifty if she’s a day! Besides, I don’t like that snaky way she has of watching everyone.”
There was no denyin’, either, that this Roulaire party did have a pair of shifty eyes in her head. I’d noticed that much myself in the few times I’d seen her. They wa’n’t any particular color you could name,—sort of a greeny gray-blue,—but they sure was bright and restless. You’d never hear a sound out of her, for she didn’t let go of any remarks that wa’n’t dragged from her; but somehow you felt, from the minute you got into the room until she’d made a gumshoe exit by the nearest door, that them sleuthy lamps never quite lost sight of you.
That and her smile was the main points about her. I’ve seen a lot of diff’rent kinds of smiles, meanin’ and unmeanin’; but this chronic half-smirk of Madame Roulaire’s was about the most unconvincin’ performance I’ve ever watched. Why, even a blind man could tell she didn’t really mean it! Outside of that, she was just a plain, pie faced sort of female with shrinkin’, apologizin’ ways and a set of store teeth that didn’t fit any too well; but she wa’n’t one that you’d suspect of anything more tragic than eatin’ maraschino cherries on the sly, or swappin’ household gossip with the cook.
That wa’n’t the way Martha had her sized up, though, and of course there was no keepin’ her inquisitive nose out of the case. First thing anyone knew, she’d backed Madame Roulaire into a corner, put her through the third degree, and come trottin’ back in triumph to Mrs. Pinckney.
“Didn’t I tell you?” says she. “French! Bosh! Perhaps you haven’t asked her about Auberge-sur-Mer, where she says she was born?”
Greraldine admits that she ain’t done much pumpin’.
“Well, I have,” says Aunt Martha, “and she couldn’t tell me a thing about the place that was so. I spent ten days there only two years ago, and remember it perfectly. She isn’t any more French than I am.”
“Oh, what of it?” says Mrs. Pinckney. “She gets along splendidly with the twins. They think the world of her.”
“But she’s thoroughly deceitful,” Aunt Martha comes back. “She misrepresents her age, lies about her birthplace, and—and she wears a transformation wig.”