Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 4 (1925-04).djvu/77

76 introduced that morning, and who had shown a decided disposition to be friends with me.

"I wear whatever happens to be handy," Portia answered, with a slight curl of her fine lips. "Frequently I wear riding breeches when I go out with the dogs at night, as I am freer to run that way than I would be in skirts. Of course, I try to avoid Meadowlawn people; they’d be scandalized at such a costume," she added, shrugging her shoulders.

"wen took me down to the butcher's in his automobile," I informed my niece. "He was on his way to call on a Russian princess."

sat up suddenly on her cushions, betraying a tense interest in what I was telling her.

"The Princess Tchernova?"

"He only said a Russian princess, Portia. Your butcher pointed out a very interesting house and beautifully landscaped grounds, some distance farther along the boulevard, which he told me the lady was on the point of acquiring."

"I'm sorry," Portia ejaculated, half to herself, as if in answer to some secret thought.

I regarded her with astonishment.

"Why sorry, my dear?"

"Well, really, Aunt Sophie, it would be hard to say just why I'm sorry that the Princess Irma Andreyevna Tchernova has decided to settle permanently in this neighborhood. I—I really don't like the lady."

"You have met her, then?"

"At Owen's office a couple of weeks ago. I was passing, and she was just going back to her automobile, so Owen insisted upon introducing her. She was—oh, it's quite impossible to put one's intuitions into words. She was — well, decidedly exotic, you know."

"What did she look like, Portia? Pretty?"

I began to have a faint suspicion that Portia's dislike for the Russian might be founded upon an unacknowledged jealousy.

"Pretty!" cried my niece. "She is one of the loveliest, and at the same time most evil, creatures I have ever seen in all my life."

"You haven't lived so very long," I reminded her dryly. "You're only going on twenty-five now, you know."

"She has a dead-white skin," Portia continued reminiscently. "Her mouth is like a crimson stain across that milky whiteness. Delicately flaring nostrils, like a spirited horse's. Her hair is ash-blond and she wears it drooping over her small ears, which must be low-set or they wouldn't show beneath it at all."

"I must confess I can't see what extreme loveliness there is in your Princess What-you-call-her, if she has a chalky complexion, and wide nostrils, and—"

Portia turned on me.

"I wish to heaven she weren't so exquisitely lovely!" cried she with passion. "It's not right! It's not fair, that such as she Oh, Auntie, you would have to see her to understand how fascinating she is!"

"Well, go on, Portia, and tell me more of her loveliness," I begged ironically.

"There's something about her light-hazel eyes that I can't quite understand, unless But then, I don't see how that could be possible—I mean probable," she corrected herself, vaguely.

"You are really making yourself very clear, Portia."

"I mean that when she looked down so that her eyes were in shadow, or when the shade of her wide-brimmed fur hat fell across her face, there was a warm light in her eyes that was almost, if not quite, garnet. I didn't—I don't—like that, Aunt Sophie."

"She must be an albino, if she has pink eyes," I snapped.