A word of cool depreciation is enough to take the lustre from a star with most people, and Miss Isabel Vane was no exception. If one abuses a person’s friends or ridicules their possessions, they may be stirred to anger; but that dispassionate, slighting way gives the deadliest of shocks to friendship.
“It scarcely does him justice,” the young lady owned; “and, as you say, the photographs are a little too small for their places. I must ask Marion for another when he comes, if he should come. The other I do not care about. He was simply put in to fill up. I must buy four more to put in these vacant places.”
“Stay!” the Signora said. “I have some which are worth more than merely to fill the vacant places; they will adorn the book.”
She brought from her room a little box of card-photographs, and began to select from them. “Here is the Holy Father on his knees before what seems to be the statue of St. Joseph holding the Child; and here are four cardinals and a patriarch. See how well they fit in! Do you mind my taking these two out?”
“Oh! no.” Isabel was too much pleased with these notable additions to her gallery to care for the two indifferent acquaintances who made
room for them. But as the Signora carelessly, and quite as a matter of course, tossed the two cards into the box where their substitutes had been, she saw that Bianca had turned from the window and was regarding them. Even in the half glance she cast she could know that the turning had been sudden, and that the girl’s head was held very high.
The Signora rose. “Well, children, if we are going to Santa Croce we must start in an hour. It is a great festa there, and I think there will be a crowd. Didn’t Bianca promise to braid my hair in a wonderful new way? I remembered it this morning, and have only given my locks a twist about the comb, and they are on the point of falling about my shoulders in the most romantic manner.”
She would not seem to see the faint shade of disturbance with which Bianca followed her from the room. She well knew that in seeming to slight the one that tender heart held dear she had chilled the heart toward herself; but that was not to last long, neither the pain nor the displeasure. She slipped a white dressing-sack on, seated herself before the long mirror, and shook her hair down. “Now, my dear, make me as beautiful as you like,” she said; and, taking the box of photographs she had brought with her on her lap, began to turn them over. “You had better take charge of these,” she remarked, laying the two at the top aside before beginning her survey of the others.
Bianca said nothing, but her hands, combing out the long, fair locks, were a little unsteady, and her face blushed in the mirror, a swift, startled blush.
“Three strands, my dear,” the Signora said. “I never fancied a