g picture, leaning back in her
chair, in a white cashmere dressing-gown covered with lace, and a little
cap upon her dark locks. All the accessories of her toilette were
exquisite, as well as the draperies about her that relieved and set off
her whiteness. Her shoes were of white plush with a cockade of lace to
correspond. Her sleeves, a little more loose than common, showed her
beautiful arms through a mist of lace. She was not more carefully nor
more elegantly dressed when she went downstairs in all her panoply of
conquest. What a pity there was no one to see it! but the Contessa did
not even think of this. In other circumstances, no doubt, there might
have been spectators, but in the meantime she pleased herself, which
after all is the first object with every well-constituted mind. She
leaned back in her chair pleased with herself and her surroundings, in a
gentle languor after her occupation, and conscious of a yellow novel
within reach should her young companion be slow of appearing. But Bice
she knew had the ears of a savage, and would hear her summons wherever
she might be.

Bice at this moment was in a very different scene. She was in the large
gallery, which was a little chill and dreary of a morning when all the
windows were full of a gray, indefinable mist instead of light, and the
ancestors were indistinguishable in their frames. She had just been
going through her usual exercise with the baby, and had joined Lucy at
the upper end of the gallery, that sport being over, and little Tom
carried off to his mid-day sleep. There was a fire there, in the
old-fashioned chimney, and Lucy had been sitting beside it watching the
sport. Bice seated herself on a stool at a little distance. She had a
half affection half dislike for this young woman, who was most near her
in age of any one in the house. For one thing they were on different
sides and representing different interests; and Bice had been trained to
dislike the ordinary housekeeping woman. They had been brought together,
indeed, in a moment of emotion by the instrumentality of the little
delicate child, for whom Bice had conceived a compassionate affection.
But the girl felt that they were antagonistic. She did not expect
understanding or charity, but to be judged harshly and condemned
summarily by this type of the conventional and proper. She believed that
Lucy would be "shocked" by what she said, and horrified by her freedom
and absence of prejudice. Yet, not