Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/166

Rh that you should have known her too! Was she always so perfectly fascinating? I wish I knew how she gives that look to her hair!”

Justine gathered up the lace sunshade and long gloves which her friend had lent her. “There was not much more that was genuine about her character—that was her very own, I mean—than there is about my appearance at this moment. She was always the dearest little chameleon in the world, taking everybody’s colour in the most ﬂattering way, and giving back, I must say, a most charming reﬂection—if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor; but when one got her by herself, with no reﬂections to catch, one found she hadn’t any particular colour of her own. One of the girls used to say she ought to wear a tag, because she was so easily mislaid— Now then, I’m ready!”

Justine advanced to the door, and Mrs. Dressel followed her downstairs, reﬂecting with pardonable complacency that one of the disadvantages of being clever was that it tempted one to say sarcastic things of other women—than which she could imagine no more crying social error.

During the drive to the garden-party, Justine’s thoughts, drawn to the past by the mention of Bessy Langhope’s name, reverted to the comic inconsequences of her own lot—to that persistent irrelevance of incident that had once made her compare herself to an [ 150 ]