Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/131

 ceeded in sufficiently annoying the Countess. Ella was annoyed by Effie's fat, dumpy figure, by her badly fitting corsets, by her false teeth, and by her gushing manner.

Mayme Townsend had annoyed the Countess in a more unforgivable way. Mayme had called the morning after Lou's reception and had warned Ella frankly that the use of cosmetics was almost a cardinal sin in the eyes of these provincials. You know and I know, Mayme had said, but they don't. Aside from her impertinent directness on this occasion, the Countess was amazed at the reservations in Mayme's intimate conversation. Ella contrasted their ostensibly informal talks with the utterly frank gossip of a mixed dinner party in Paris, and she could not resist smiling.

Nevertheless, she saw more of Mayme than she did of any one else, Lou, of course, excepted. There was something about Mayme that she liked. In her own way, Mayme governed society in this small community and it vaguely amused the Countess to watch her do it. Mayme had a delightfully wholesome quality, a great deal of character which it would have needed no moustache to denote, and even a slight sense of humour. She was heartily intolerant, but no more intolerant, it regaled Ella to remember, than the Princesse de Laumes in her own fashion, certainly by no means as intolerant as the Duchess of Wrexe. There was, however, a reasonable codicil to this idea: Mayme's intol-