in
petticoats. She looks like that."

Drusilla pulled down the corners of a large, mobile mouth, so as to
simulate Lady Bannockburn's expression, in a way that drew a laugh from
every one at the table but the host. Henry Guion remained serious, not
from natural gravity, but from inattention. He was obviously not in a
mood for joking, nor apparently for eating, since he had scarcely tasted
his soup and was now only playing with the fish. As this corroborated
what Mrs. Temple had more than once asserted to her husband during the
past few weeks, that "Henry Guion had something on his mind," she
endeavored to exchange a glance with him, but he was too frankly
enjoying the exercise of his daughter's mimetic gift to be otherwise
observant.

"And what does Colonel Ashley look like, Drucie?" he asked, glancing
slyly at Miss Guion.

"Like that," Mrs. Fane said, instantly. Straightening the corners of
her mouth and squaring her shoulders, she fixed her eyes into a stare of
severity, and stroked horizontally an imaginary mustache, keeping the
play up till her lips quivered.

"It is like him," Miss Guion laughed.

"Is he as stiff as all that?" the professor inquired.

"Not stiff," Miss Guion explained, "only dignified."

"Dignified!" Drusilla cried. "I should think so. He's just like Olivia
herself. It's perfectly absurd that those two should marry. Apart,
they're a pair of splendid specimens; united, they'll be too much of a
good thing. They're both so well supplied with the same set of virtues
that when they look at each other it'll be like seeing their own faces
in a convex mirror. It'll be simply awful."

Her voice had the luscious English intonation, in spite of its being
pitched a little too high. In speaking she displayed the superior,
initiated manner apt to belong to women who bring the flavor of England
into colonial and Indian garrison towns--a manner Drusilla had acquired
notably well, considering that not ten years previous her life had been
bounded by American college class-days. Something of this latter fact
persisted, notwithstanding her English articulation and style of doing
her hair. Her marriage had been the accident of a winter spent with her
mother in Bermuda, at a time when the Sussex Rangers were stationed
there. Her engagement to Captain Gerald Fane--son of the Very Reverend
the Dean of Silchester--was the result of a series of dances given
chiefly in the Hamilton hotels. Marriage brought the gir