"It's perfectly lovely!" said Maryllia, with a little sigh of content; "And it is all my own!"
She drew her head in from the window and turned to her mirror.
"I'm getting old," she said, surveying herself critically, and with considerable disfavour;--"It's all the result of society 'pressure,' as they call it. There's a line here--and another there"--indicating the imaginary facial defects with a small tapering forefinger--"And I daresay I have some grey hairs, if I could only find them." Here she untwisted the coil at the back of her head and let it fall in a soft curling shower round her shoulders--"Oh, yes!--I daresay!" she went on, addressing her image in the glass; "You think it looks very pretty--but that is only an 'effect,' you know! It's like the advertisements the photographers do for the hairdressers; 'Hair- positively-forced-to-grow-in-six-weeks' sort of thing. Oh, what a dear old chime!" This, as she heard the ancient clock in the square turret which overlooked the Tudor courtyard give forth a mellow tintinnabulation. "What time is it, I wonder?" She glanced at the tiny trifle of a watch she had taken off and placed on her dressing- table. "Quarter past seven! I must have had a doze, after all. I think I will ring for Nancy Pyrle"--and she suited the action to the word; "I have not the least idea where my clothes are."
Nancy obeyed the summons with alacrity. She could not help a slight start as she saw her mistress, looking like 'the picture of an angel' as she afterwards described it, in her loose white dressing- gown, with all her hair untwisted and floating over her shoulders. She had never seen any human creature quite so lovely.
"Do you know where my dresses are, Nancy?" enquired Maryllia.
"Yes, Miss. Mrs. Spruce unpacked everything herself, and the dresses are all hanging in this wardrobe." Here Nancy went to the piece of furniture in question. "Which one shall I give you, Miss?"
Maryllia came to her side, and looked scrutinisingly at all the graceful Parisian and Viennese flimsies that hung in an. orderly row within the wardrobe, uncertain which to take. At last she settled on an exceedingly simple white tea-gown, shaped after a Greek model, and wholly untrimmed, save for a small square gold band at the throat.
"This will do!" she decided; "Nobody's coming to dine; I shall be all alone--"