some means or
other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of
rather suspicious splendour--gowns of stiff and costly silk, fitting
her indifferently, and apparently made for other proportions than those
they now adorned; caps with real lace borders, and--the chief item in
the inventory, the spell by which she struck a certain awe through the
household, quelling the otherwise scornfully disposed teachers and
servants, and, so long as her broad shoulders _wore_ the folds of that
majestic drapery, even influencing Madame herself--_a real Indian
shawl_--"un veritable cachemire," as Madame Beck said, with unmixed
reverence and amaze. I feel quite sure that without this "cachemire"
she would not have kept her footing in the pensionnat for two days: by
virtue of it, and it only, she maintained the same a month.

But when Mrs. Sweeny knew that I was come to fill her shoes, then it
was that she declared herself--then did she rise on Madame Beck in her
full power--then come down on me with her concentrated weight. Madame
bore this revelation and visitation so well, so stoically, that I for
very shame could not support it otherwise than with composure. For one
little moment Madame Beck absented herself from the room; ten minutes
after, an agent of the police stood in the midst of us. Mrs. Sweeny and
her effects were removed. Madame's brow had not been ruffled during the
scene--her lips had not dropped one sharply-accented word.

This brisk little affair of the dismissal was all settled before
breakfast: order to march given, policeman called, mutineer expelled;
"chambre d'enfans" fumigated and cleansed, windows thrown open, and
every trace of the accomplished Mrs. Sweeny--even to the fine essence
and spiritual fragrance which gave token so subtle and so fatal of the
head and front of her offending--was annihilated from the Rue Fossette:
all this, I say, was done between the moment of Madame Beck's issuing
like Aurora from her chamber, and that in which she coolly sat down to
pour out her first cup of coffee.

About noon, I was summoned to dress Madame. (It appeared my place was
to be a hybrid between gouvernante and lady's-maid.) Till noon, she
haunted the house in her wrapping-gown, shawl, and soundless slippers.
How would the lady-chief of an English school approve this custom?

The dressing of her hair puzzled me; she had plenty of it: auburn,
unmixed with grey: though she was forty years old. Seeing my
e