Part 36 (1/2)

I didn't want to look nice and be a credit to Lady Turnour. I wanted to look a fright, and didn't care if I were a disgrace to her. But the startling scarlet satin was Liberty satin, and therefore had a sheen, and a soft way of folding that redeemed it somewhat. Its bright poppy colour, its emerald beetle-wings shading to gold, and its glittering fringes that waved like a wheat-field stirred by a breeze, all gave a bizarre sort of ”value,” as artists say, to my pale yellow hair and dark eyes. I couldn't help seeing that the dreadful dress made my skin pearly white; and I was afraid that, when I had altered the thing, instead of looking like a frump, I should only present the appearance of a rather fast little actress. I should be looked at in my scarlet abomination.

People would stare, and smile. The d.u.c.h.esse de Melun would say to the Marquise de Roquemartine: ”Who is that young person? She looks exactly like someone I know--that little Lys d'Angely the millionaire-man, Charretier, is so silly about.”

”You see, you can alter it very easily,” said Lady Turnour.

”Yes, miladi.”

”Have you got any dancing slippers?”

”No--that is--I don't know--”

”Don't be stupid. I will give you ten francs to buy yourself a pair of red stockings and red slippers to match. The stockings needn't be silk.

They won't show much. Dane can take you in the car to Clermont-Ferrand this afternoon. I want you to be all right, from head to feet--different from any of the other maids.”

I didn't doubt that I would be different--very different.

Tap, tap, a knock at the door.

”Ontray!” cried her ladys.h.i.+p.

The door opened. Mr. Herbert Stokes stood on the threshold.

”I say, Lady T--” he began, when he saw the scarlet vision, and stopped.

”What is it?” inquired the wife of his stepfather--rather a complicated relation.

”I--er--wanted--” drawled Bertie. ”But it doesn't matter. Another time.”

”You needn't mind _her_,” said Lady Turnour, with a nod toward me. ”It's only my maid. I'm giving her a dress for the servants' ball to-night.”

Bertie gave vent to the ghost of a whistle, below his breath. He looked at me, twisting the end of his small fair moustache, as he had looked at Jack Dane last night; and though his expression was different, I liked it no better.

”Thought it was a new guest,” said he.

”I suppose you didn't take her for a lady, did you?” my mistress was curious to know. ”You pride yourself on your discrimination, your stepfather says.”

”There's nothing the matter with my discrimination,” replied the young man, smiling. But his smile was not for her ladys.h.i.+p. It was for me; and it was meant to be a piquant little secret between us two.

How well I remembered asking the chauffeur, ”_Could_ you know a Bertie?”

And how he answered that he had known one, and consequently didn't want to know another. Here was the same Bertie; and now that I too knew him, I thought I would prefer to know another, rather than know more of him.

Yet he was good-looking, almost handsome. He had short, curly light hair, eyes as blue as turquoises, seen by daylight, full red lips under the little moustache, a white forehead, a dimple in the chin, and a very good figure. He had also an educated, perhaps too well educated, voice, which tried to advertise that it had been made at Oxford; and he had hands as carefully kept as a pretty woman's, with manicured, filbert-shaped nails.

”You're making her jolly smart,” he went on. ”She'll do you credit.”

”I want she should,” retorted her ladys.h.i.+p, gratified and ungrammatical.

”She must give me a dance--what?” condescended the gilded youth. ”Does she speak English?”

”Yes. So you'd better be careful what you say before her.”

Bertie telegraphed another smile to me. I looked at the faded damask curtains; at the mantelpiece with its gilded clock and two side-pieces, Louis Seize at his worst, considered good enough for a bedroom; at the drapings of the enormous bed; at the portiere covering the door of Sir Samuel's dressing-room; at the kaleidoscopic claret-and-blue figures on the carpet; in fact, at everything within reach of my eyes except Mr.