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 could see herself, in her mother's new claret-colored evening dress, unconscious, lost in her part; she could hear people saying: "Who is that exquisite child with the sensitive face? See, she has forgotten it isn't real; she is a court lady. The other children are acting their parts, but she is living hers." "Yes, mother dear," she whispered. "Yes, Mrs. Plummer, I'll try to be a court lady"

The conversation moved on from her and was no longer interesting. But still she hung over the banisters, for she had caught sight of her reflection in the glass of an engraving of the Sistine Madonna, and gazed at herself against a background of saints and angels until her mother's voice broke the enchantment and sent her tiptoeing back to her room before she answered, "Yes, mother dear?"

"Come down a minute, darling."

In the mirror over the fireplace Christabel saw herself again as she laid her smooth peach-pink cheek against the great-aunts' withered dead-leaf faces, Aunt Clara's doughy white-