Page:The Tattooed Countess (1924).pdf/212

 tiny frills of yellow lace. Filmy lace also spilled from either side of the high collar, below which a square cape-collar, adorned with more green ribbon and lace, spread over her shoulders. The waist-band, too, was fashioned of green ribbon, and into this, from a vase standing on her dresser, she inserted one full-blown red rose. Searching her jewel-case, she pondered over the profusion of sunbursts, rings, and brooches, leaving them, finally, in their places. She determined to wear no ornaments this evening. There was a virginal quality in this abstinence which appealed to her imagination. Her face she made up to appear very pale; she accented her eyelashes and eyelids with a pencil and placed the minimum of rouge high on her cheek-bones, with a dab on her chin and on her forehead above each eye. This slightly eccentric make-up was so skilfully executed as to appear almost natural.

After she had completed her toilet by spraying herself with heliotrope, the Countess lighted the remaining gas-jets (there were four on the sidewalls besides the six in the chandelier) and sat down before the mirror over her bureau to regard herself, a habit that, of late, she found growing on her. Twenty years ago, she reflected, I would have dressed hurriedly, with hardly a glance at myself, but now. . . She scanned her face carefully; on a dimly lit porch, she fully believed, and not without some justification, she might pass for thirty-five. Her happiness had quickly ironed out the puffs under