.

My mother's bedroom was her own as definitely as her blue-veined,
pointed hands; Sue Paynter's, into which I went once to lift out her
little son in one of his illnesses, was like no one's else in the
world, individual, intense; even old Madam Bradley's, in its clear
whites and polished dark wood, translated to my boyish, awed soul, a
sense of her impenetrable character.

But not so Margarita's. It was furnished and decorated in grey-blue
tints, because I had suggested this. It had odd touches of greyish
rose, because Whistler had insisted on it. It was fitted with old
mahogany, because Roger liked this and collected it here and there.
But of all the personality that her father-lover had known how to
build into his home of exile, there was absolutely none.

Was it because there were no work-baskets, spilling lace and bits of
ribbon, no photographs, no keepsakes, hideous perhaps, but dear for
what they represent, no worn girlhood's books, no shamefaced toys,
lingering from the nursery, no litter of any other member of her
family? Perhaps. Mme. Modjeska, then, and even now one of the greatest
actresses on our stage, called it an unwomanly room, but I am not
quite sure that this is precisely what she meant.

No, the most vivid impression the room could make upon me was one that
brings a reminiscent chuckle even to-day. As my eye fell on the
antique dressing-table, I seemed to see, suddenly and laughably,
Margarita, sweeping down the stairs, enveloped in a billowy
_peignoir_, her hair loose, her eyes flashing furiously, in her
extended finger and thumb, held as one would hold a noxious adder, a
thin navy-blue necktie.

"Is that yours?" she demanded tragically of her husband.

"Why, yes, I believe it is," said Roger, with the grave politeness
that years of intimacy could never take from him.

"I found it _on my dressing-table_!" she thundered, and her voice
echoed like an angry vault, "_on--my--dressing-table_!"

She dropped it like a toad at his feet, swept us all with the
lightning of her eyes, coldly, distastefully, and swam up the stairs,
an avenging goddess, deaf to Roger's matter-of-fact apology, blind to
Miss Jencks's deprecating blushes. As for me, so under the spell of
that voice have I always been, that I swear I thought her hardly
used--the darling vixen!

PART EIGHT

IN WHICH THE RIVER RUSHES INTO
PERILOUS RAPIDS

Come, my mother that carried me,
Make me to-night an olden spell!