Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/41



ADAME DE LAMOUDERIE wore her frayed and rusty black; but her hair had been hastily dressed under a black lace mantilla and instead of battered boots she wore high-heeled satin shoes. Her old lips were rouged, her old cheek smeared with white, and she advanced towards them, her ebony stick in her hand, with a very majestic manner.

Jill gazed at her; amazed; arrested. She was trying to see her as the friend of Marthe Ludérac and finding it difficult. It was Graham who guessed at the burning excitement that devoured her ancient heart and who interpreted the kindling of her eyes as they rested upon Jill. Her interest in art—he had seen it from the first—was as rudimentary as Jill's own; she had expected to see in his wife, perhaps, a raw, un-tempered young bohemian; and in Jill she recognized at once a denizen of the world; of the only world she cared about. She had not been able to place him; but Jill she placed at once, and her manner as she took her in, took in her mushroom-coloured silk, her hat and gloves and shoes, her air, burnished, finished, nonchalant, and kindly, became at once less majestic and more effusive; even a little too effusive. She greeted them; she begged them to be seated; and, smiling upon Jill, whom her great eyes continued to devour and to