"Well, it does make a difference, Miss!" she broke in with playful emphasis. "It makes the difference that I am going to do it over. Come into the dressing-room and I will make a perfect beauty of you. You shall see."
I arose and followed her into the adjoining room, where she placed two seats before a long mirror that reached nearly to the floor. Mine was a low footstool, and hers a padded chair. I threw myself down at her feet, and drawing out my hairpins gave myself up entirely to the gratification of her latest caprice.
Very soon her old humor broke out in merry little peals of laughter, as she turned me into a Japanese or Feejee Islander, by appropriate arrangements of my plentiful hair; or her old partiality asserted itself as she praised my flowing tresses and made me assume attitudes that were peculiar to the representation of Faith or Undine.
"Oh! now you look like pictures of Mary Magdalene!" she exclaimed suddenly, as I stooped to pick something off the floor. "Stay that way just for a moment. I hear la bonne coming and I want her to see you. Here she is." There was a hurried tap at the door and la bonne came in, with a face so full of purpose that we forgot our fanciful amusement. She advanced towards me with a little folded paper which she held out saying
"Mademoiselle, c'est un telegram!"
It was probably from Mde de Beaumont, I thought, announcing her return, and quietly signing the necessary paper, I tore open the sealed message and read it.
The room began to turn about me. The words grew blurred before my eyes I raised my hands in distraction to my head and fell sobbing on Hortense's knees.
"Amey, dear Amey, what is the matter?" She cried, eagerly bending over me with quick starting tears of sympathy in her eyes.
"My father!" I moaned, "my poor father!"
"Is he ill or what? Do tell me what ails him Amey?"