She turned and curtsied to
them demurely--then suddenly raising one leg in a horizontal position,
she twirled it rapidly in their faces,--then she gave a little shocked
cough behind her hand, grinned, and vanished.
When, in the stipulated ten minutes, she was ready to receive her
unknown visitor, she was quite transformed. She had arrayed herself in a
trailing gown of rich black velvet, fastened at the side with jet
clasps--a cluster of natural, innocent, white violets nestled in the
fall of Spanish lace at her throat--her face was pale with
pearl-powder,--and she had eaten a couple of scented bon-bons to drown
the smell of her recent brandy-tipple. She reclined gracefully in an
easy chair, pretending to read, and she rose with an admirably acted air
of startled surprise, as one of the errand boys belonging to the
Brilliant tapped at her door, and in answer to her "Come in!" announced,
"Lady Winsleigh!"
A faint, sweet, questioning smile played on the Vere's wide mouth.
"I am not aware that I have the honor of--" she began, modulating her
voice to the requirements of fashionable society, and wondering within
herself "what the d----l" this woman in the silk and sable-fur costume
wanted.
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