The Law and the Lady

She nodded her head significantly, and whispered to me again. 'Lord bless you, I'm used to this!' she said. 'There is a gentleman in the case. Don't mind me, ma'am. It's a way I have. I mean no harm.' She stopped, and looked at me critically. 'I wouldn't change my dress if I were you,' she went on. 'The color becomes you.'

It was too late to resent the woman's impertinence. There was no help for it but to make use of her. Besides, she was right about the dress. It was of a delicate maize-color, prettily trimmed with lace. I could wear nothing which suited me better. My hair, however, stood in need of some skilled attention. The chambermaid rearranged it with a ready hand which showed that she was no beginner in the art of dressing hair. She laid down the combs and brushes, and looked at me; then looked at the toilet-table, searching for something which she apparently failed to find.

'Where do you keep it?' she asked.

'What do you mean?'

'Look at your complexion, ma'am. You will frighten him if he sees you like that. A touch of color you must have. Where do you keep it? What! you haven't got it? you never use it? Dear, dear, dear me!'

For a moment surprise fairly deprived her of her self-possession. Recovering herself, she begged permission to leave me for a minute. I let her go, knowing what her errand was. She came back with a box of paint and powders; and I said nothing to check her. I saw, in the glass, my skin take a false fairness, my cheeks a false color, my eyes a false brightness—and I never shrank from it. No! I let the odious conceit go on; I even admired the extraordinary delicacy and dexterity with which it was all done. 'Anything' (I thought to myself, in the madness of that miserable time) 'so long as it helps me to win the Major's confidence! Anything, so long as I discover what those last words of my husband's really mean!'

The transformation of my face was accomplished. The chambermaid pointed with her wicked forefinger in the direction of the glass.

'Bear in mind, ma'am, what you looked like when you sent for me,' she said. 'And just see for yourself how you look now. You're the prettiest woman (of your style) in London. Ah what a thing pearl-powder is, when one knows how to use it!'

CHAPTER VIII. THE FRIEND OF THE WOMEN.

I FIND it impossible to describe my sensations while the carriage was taking me to Major Fitz-David's house. I doubt, indeed, if I really felt or thought at all, in the true sense of those words.

From the moment when I had resigned myself into the hands of the chambermaid I seemed in some strange way to have lost my ordinary identity—to have stepped out of my own character. At other times my temperament was of the nervous and anxious sort, and my tendency was to exaggerate any difficulties that might place themselves in my way. At other times, having before me the prospect of a critical interview with a stranger, I should have considered with myself what it might be wise to pass over, and what it might be wise to say. Now I never gave my coming interview with the Major a thought; I felt an unreasoning confidence in myself, and a blind faith in him. Now neither the past nor the future troubled me; I lived unreflectingly in the present. I looked at the shops as we drove by them, and at the other carriages as they passed mine. I noticed—yes, and enjoyed—the glances of admiration which chance foot-passengers on the pavement cast on me. I said to myself, 'This looks well for my prospect of making a friend of the Major!' When we drew up at the door in Vivian Place, it is no exaggeration to say that I had but one anxiety—anxiety to find the Major at home.

The door was opened by a servant out of livery, an old man who looked as if he might have been a soldier in his earlier days. He eyed me with a grave attention, which relaxed little by little into sly approval. I asked for Major Fitz-David. The answer was not altogether encouraging: the man was not sure whether his master were at home or not.

I gave him my card. My cards, being part of my wedding outfit, necessarily had the false name printed on them—Mrs. Eustace Woodville. The servant showed me into a front room on the ground- floor, and disappeared with my card in his hand.

Looking about me, I noticed a door in the wall opposite the window, communicating with some inner room. The door was not of the ordinary kind. It fitted into the thickness of the partition wall, and worked in grooves. Looking a little nearer, I saw that it had not been pulled out so as completely to close the doorway. Only the merest chink was left; but it was enough to convey to my ears all that passed in the next room.

'What did you say, Oliver, when she asked for me?' inquired a man's voice, pitched cautiously in a low key.

'I said I was not sure you were at home, sir,' answered the voice of the servant who had let me in.

There was a pause. The first speaker was evidently Major Fitz-David himself. I waited to hear more.

'I think I had better not see her, Oliver,' the Major's voice resumed.

'Very good, sir.'

'Say I have gone out, and you don't know when I shall be back again. Beg the lady to write, if she has any business with me.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Stop, Oliver!'

Oliver stopped. There was another and longer pause. Then the master resumed the examination of the man.

'Is she young, Oliver?'

'Yes, sir.'

'And—pretty?'

'Better than pretty, sir, to my thinking.'

'Aye? aye? What you call a fine woman—eh, Oliver?'

'Certainly, sir.'