were out
visiting," Lucy said, instead of at home in their own house. She was
amused at all this form and ceremony, and came down to the drawing-room
with a little flush of pleasure and merriment about her, quite different
from the demure little Lady Randolph, half frightened and very serious,
with the weight on her mind of a strange language to be spoken, who but
for Sir Tom's intervention would have been standing by the fire awaiting
her visitor. The Dowager was downstairs before her, looking grave
enough, and Jock, slim and dark, supporting a corner of the mantelpiece,
like a young Caryatides in black. Lucy's brightness, her pretty shimmer
of blue, the flower in her hair, relieved these depressing influences.
She stood in the firelight with the ruddy irregular glare playing on
her, a pretty youthful figure; and her husband's assiduities, and the
entire cessation of any apparent consciousness on his part that any
question had ever arisen between them, made Lucy's heart light in her
breast. She forgot even the possibility of having to talk French in the
ease of her mind; and before she had time to remember her former alarm
there came gliding through the subdued light of the greater drawing-room
two figures. Sir Tom stepped forward to meet the stranger, who gave him
her hand as if she saw him for the first time, and Lucy advanced with a
little tremor. Here was the Contessa--the Forno-Populo--the foreign
great lady and great beauty at last.

She was tall--almost as tall as Sir Tom--and had the majestic grace
which only height can give. She was clothed in dark velvet, which fell
in long folds to her feet, and her hair, which seemed very abundant, was
much dressed with puffs and curlings and frizzings, which filled Lucy
with wonder, but furnished a delicate frame-work for her beautiful,
clear, high features, and the wonderful tint of her complexion--a sort
of warm ivory, which made all brighter colours look excessive. Her eyes
were large and blue, with long but not very dark eyelashes; her throat
was like a slender column out of a close circle of feathery lace. Lucy,
who had a great deal of natural taste, felt on the moment a thrill of
shame on account of her blue gown, and an almost disgust of Lady
Randolph's old-fashioned openness about the shoulders. The stranger was
one of those women whose dress always impresses other women with such a
sense of fitness that fashion itself looks vulgar or insipid beside her.
She gave S