Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/23

 Parisian lady's mantua. It is a shame they must always wear such stuffy white and look like harnessed polar bears.' And her mind went back poignantly to the flashing and dainty horses her mother had owned. Black, they were usually, or bays, and when you rode them you were like a bird flying down the sky upon the wind. Papa would sell them, now Mamma was gone forever.

'I knew you,' Pauline said, 'the moment I put my eyes on you. I saw your profile as you...shrank away from that man, and I knew that you were my cousin. Not, of course, that we look alike, as I am light and at least ten years older.'

Lanice glanced sidewise at her companion and saw with dismay and distaste that there was between the two of them a fundamental resemblance, hidden deep down in the bony structure of the face. Her cousin had an eager, intelligent face and a waspish manner. Her skin was blotched, and the parentheses marks were beginning to close grimly about her mouth. It was humiliating to think that any one could see a likeness between them. She was glad her hair was not ash blond nor her skin broken. There was a mysterious contagion about Pauline's ugliness. Some plain girls made Lanice believe herself a beauty, but Pauline made her feel irritated with herself.

Pauline was speaking. 'You must get your black eyes from your father's side of the house; the Poggys are quite fair.'

'Yes, Papa is black as the ace of spades, but his skin is very light. Mamma was a chestnut blonde. I