afternoon tea
at my Aunt Jessica's and have waylaid Mrs. Ralph Ordeyne outside the
Oratory. The question is: Shall Truth anticipate them? I think not.
Every family has its irrepressible, impossible, unpractical member, its
_enfant terrible_, who is forever doing the wrong thing with the best
intentions. Truth is the _enfant terrible_ of the Virtues. Some times
it puts them to the blush and throws them into confusion; at others it
blusters like a blatant liar; at others, again, it stutters and stammers
like a detected thief. There is no knowing how Truth may behave, so I
shall not let it visit my relations.

I must confess, however, that I feared the possible passing by of the
two decrepit cronies, when Carlotta stood at my open French window this
morning. She is really indecently beautiful. She was wearing a deep red
silk peignoir, open at the throat, unashamedly Parisian, which clung
to every salient curve of her figure. I wondered where, in the name of
morality, she had procured the garment. I learned later that it was the
joy and pride of Antoinette's existence; for once, in the days long ago,
when she was _femme de chambre_ to a luminary of the cafes concerts, it
had met around her waist. She had treasured the cast-off finery of this
burned-out star--she beamed in the seventies--for all these years, and
now its immortal devilry transfigured Carlotta. She was also washed
specklessly clean. An aroma that no soap or artificial perfume could
give disengaged itself from her as she moved. Her gold-bronze hair
was superbly ordered. I noticed her arms which the sleeves of the gay
garment left bare to the elbows; the skin was like satin. "_Et sa peau!
On dirait du satin._" Confound Antoinette! She had the audacity, too,
to come down with bare feet. It was a revelation of pink, undreamed-of
loveliness in tus.

I repeat she is indecently beautiful. A chit of a girl of eighteen (for
that I learn is her age) has no right to flaunt the beauty that should
be the appanage of the woman of seven and twenty. She should be modestly
well-favoured, as becomes her childish stage of development. She
looked incongruous among my sober books, and I regarded her with some
resentment. I dislike the exotic. I prefer geraniums to orchids. I have
a row of pots of the former on my balcony, and the united efforts of
Stenson, Antoinette, and myself have not yet succeeded in making them
bloom; but I love the unassuming velvety leaves. Carlotta is a f