“Why, he gave my aunt the book years ago—confound him!—and ever since she has been a nuisance to her friends. For my own part, you know, I don’t believe that Marcus Aurelius was quite such an ass as Plato. He talks the same sort of perpetual commonplaces, but it isn’t about the true, the good and the beautiful. Would you like me to repeat one of the dialogues of Plato—about the immorality of Mr. Cole and the moral effect of the South Kensington Museum?”
“No, dear, I shouldn’t,” said Sheila.
“You deprive yourself of a treat, but never mind. Here we are at my aunt’s house.”
Sheila timidly glanced at the place, while her husband paid the cabman. It was a tall, narrow, dingy-looking house of dark brick, with some black-green ivy at the foot of the walls, and with crimson curtains formally arranged in every one of the windows. If Mrs. Lavender was a rich old lady, why did she live in such a gloomy building? Sheila had seen beautiful white houses in all parts of London; her own house, for example, was ever so much more cheerful than this one, and yet she had heard with awe of the value of this depressing little mansion in Kensington Gore.
The door was opened by a man, who showed them upstairs and announced their names. Sheila’s heart beat quickly. She entered the drawing-room with a sort of mist before her eyes, and found herself going forward to a lady who sat at the farther end. She had a strangely vivid impression, amid all her alarm, that this old lady looked like the withered kernel of a nut. Or, was she not like a cockatoo? It was through no anticipation of dislike to Mrs. Lavender that the imagination of the girl got hold of that notion. But the old lady held her head like a cockatoo. What was there, moreover, about the decorations of her head that reminded one of a cockatoo when it puts up its crest and causes its feathers to look like sticks of celery.
“Aunt Caroline, this is my wife.”
“I am glad to see you, dear,” said the old lady, giving her hand, but not rising. “Sit down. When you are a little nervous you ought to sit down. Frank, give me that ammonia from the mantelpiece.”
It was a small glass phial, and labeled “Poison.” She smelt the stopper, and then handed it to Sheila, telling her to do the same.
“Why did your maid do your hair in such a way?” she asked suddenly.
“I haven’t got a maid,” said Sheila, “and I always do my hair so.”