“But they’re not pink. Her eyebrows, too—they’re finely penciled and several shades darker than her hair. They curve downward until they meet in a sharp angle over her thin, delicately modeled nose. She shows her teeth too much when she smiles, too,” mused my niece.
“Do you mean that she has a ‘gummy’ smile?” I insinuated.
“Oh, no, not at all. Her teeth just show a little, but they are small—and glittering white—and sharp—. She has a trick of moistening her red lips with her pointed little tongue.”
“It seems to me that you were very observant, when one considers that you’ve only met the lady on a single occasion,” I observed. “She must be almost as unpleasant as those Arnold children,” said I, recalling my encounter with those disagreeable and precocious infants.
“Her hands are slender, fascinating, with polished almond-shaped nails. I wish I could have seen enough of them in repose to have noted the length of the third fingers.”
“It sounds to me as if you thought you were on the track of something, Portia.”
“I believe I am, Auntie! The more I think of it—.”
She jumped up from her cushions, managing her flowing draperies with an easy grace that I envied, and went browsing about among the books, taking out first one, then another, and laying them aside. Afterward she brought them across the room, made a little pile beside her cushions, and sank down near by.
She began then to turn their pages so absorbedly that I went up to my own room after a little while and began to unpack my trunk, which had arrived that morning during my absence. It was just as well that I busied myself without depending upon Portia for distraction; she hardly spoke during lunch, after which she returned at once to her books, making notes here and there as she read.
It was late in the afternoon when she apparently finished whatever she was looking up. I had walked past the library door a couple of times, and peeped in to see if she was through.
She came up to my room, yawning widely.
“After more than a year of sleeping all day, it’s hard to overcome the habit,” she said, stretching luxuriously as she halted on the threshold.
“Why don’t you take a little nap?”
“Because I’m trying to keep regular hours like yours, Aunt Sophie. Still . . . . Oh, you can have no idea how much I miss Mr. Differdale! The uplift, the inspiration, of his companionship, his work! If I could only have an opportunity to talk with him right now,” said she tensely, “how thankful I’d be! He could solve my problem so quickly and easily—and I don’t know that I’m prepared to undertake his work and carry it on alone, yet.”
“For the Lord’s sake, keep away from those magic spells you’ve been telling me about, Portia Delorme!” I cried in considerable alarm.
The very idea of her raising—figuratively, if not actually—the devil, made me sick with apprehension. I thought of her late husband’s dreadful fate, and shuddered.
“Oh, don’t be afraid, Auntie. I’m not going to take any risks if I can help it. But I certainly should like to talk with him,” she finished musingly.
At this juncture Fu Sing came trotting up into the hallway to remark that the automobile of the honorable Mr. Edwardes was without, and that the honorable Mr. Edwardes wanted to know if the distinguished ladies wouldn’t like a little spin up the boulevard to the bay, as the day was so springlike.
