Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/154

 decorated body. The face was a rounded, nondescript child-face with something at once sweet and sullen in the expression of the mouth; but the dark eyes held Jill's attention. Resentful, mournful, unchildish eyes, set so unevenly (one seeming with its heavy gaze to sink into the cheek and one to rise, plaintively, into the temple) that they made her think of the suffering, uneven eyes of Eleanora Duse whom she had once seen act. Suddenly, as she looked, she realized that this must be Mademoiselle Ludérac's mother in childhood, and it almost frightened her to see her there. She moved her chair so that she should not face the portrait. She had found no resemblance in it, yet had had time to feel, in those dark eyes, a familiar, a tragic potency.

Mademoiselle Ludérac had tuned her harp to her satisfaction and was now seated in the majestic pose, foot outstretched to the pedal, arms laid along the strings, that the playing of the instrument involves. She glanced at Jill, and there was something dark, preoccupied in her expression.

'She must have seen me looking,' thought Jill.

'Passionate? Romantic?' Mademoiselle Ludérac addressed Madame de Lamouderie. That might be a Chopin Nocturne, then. But shall we begin with a Mozart Sonata?'

'Yes; by all means. He is cheerful, light-hearted, Mozart. There was a picture of him as a child in a room at my home; a small boy, at the harpsichord, with powdered hair. Ah, there are no such musicians now-