Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/15



On Thursday, June 17, 1897, in the women's toilet-room at one end of a parlour-car on the Overland Limited, speeding westward from Chicago, a lady sat smoking a cigarette. It was a sultry day and she did not appear to be very comfortable; obviously no one but a confirmed smoker would have resorted to this only means, in the circumstances, of evading the custom of the country.

The Countess Ella Nattatorrini was a well-preserved, fashionably dressed woman of fifty. Little lines were beginning to gather around her grey eyes. Her golden-red hair, parted and waved, quite evidently owed its hue to the art of the hairdresser. Her slightly sagging chin was supported by the stiff bones in her high lace collar. She was at that dangerous and fascinating age just before decay sets in. Nevertheless, although at the moment an expression of melancholy lurked, shadowlike, about her countenance, her face offered at once the impression of an alert intelligence and an abounding vitality, an impression accentuated by her somewhat saucy nose which tilted slightly upwards, a mouth which, aided by artifice, formed a perfect Cupid's bow, and by her small, well-formed, rosy ears, her