Part 5 (2/2)
I dared not believe that she had posed for me. It must have been for Lady Kilmarny; and that I alone should see the picture was a bad beginning.
She is of the age when a woman can still tell people that she is forty, hoping they will exclaim politely, ”Impossible!”
It is not enough for her to be a Ladys.h.i.+p and a millionairess. She will be a beauty as well, or at all costs she will be looked at. To that end are her eyebrows and lashes black as jet, her undulated hair crimson, her lips a brighter shade of the same colour, and her skin of magnolia pallor, like the heroines of the novels which are sure to be her favourites. Once, she must have been handsome, a hollyhock queen of a kitchen-garden kingdom; but she would be far more attractive now if only she had ”abdicated,” as nice middle-aged women say in France.
Her dress was the very latest dream of a neurotic Parisian modiste, and would have been seductive on a slender girl. On her--well, at least she would have her wish in it--she would not pa.s.s unnoticed!
She looked surprised at sight of me, and I saw she didn't realize that I was the expected candidate.
”Lady Kilmarny couldn't come,” I began to explain, ”and--”
”Oh!” she cut me short. ”So you are the young person she is recommending as a maid.”
I corrected Miss Paget when she called me a ”young woman,” but times have changed since then, and in future I must humbly consent to be a young person, or even a creature.
For a minute I forgot, and almost sat down. It would have been the end of me if I had! Luckily I remembered What I was, and stood before my mistress, trying to look like Patience on a monument with b.u.t.ter in her mouth which mustn't be allowed to melt.
”What is your name?” began the catechism (and the word was ”nime,”
according to Lady Turnour).
”N or M,” nearly slipped out of my mouth, but I put Satan with all his mischief behind me, and answered that I was Lys d'Angely.
”Oh, the surname doesn't matter. As you're a French girl, I shall call you by your first name. It's always done.”
(The first time in history, I'd swear, that a d'Angely was ever told his name didn't matter!)
”You seem to speak English very well for a French woman?” (This almost with suspicion.)
”My mother was American.”
”How extraordinary!”
(This was apparently a _tache_. Evidently lady's-maids are expected _not_ to have American mothers!)
”Let me hear your French accent.”
I let her hear it.
”H'm! It seems well enough. Paris?”
”Paris, madame.”
”Don't call me 'madame.' Any common person is madame. You should say 'your ladys.h.i.+p'.”
I said it.
”And I want you should speak to me in the third person, like the French servants are supposed to do in good houses.”
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