In her hand she carried a cheap silver-backed
brush, and her long dark hair was undone. She looked strikingly
handsome, but the thick black strands hanging down on either side of the
white face recalled to Mary a picture in the library at Lady
MacMillan's. It was a clever painting of the Medusa, level-eyed, with a
red mouth like a wound, and dimly seen, pale glimmering features,
between the lazy writhing of dark snakes. The thing had fascinated Mary
in her impressionable schoolgirl days, but now she tried to huddle the
idea quickly out of her head, for it seemed disloyal and even disgusting
in connection with her hostess.
"I saw your light under the door," Lady Dauntrey said, "and I thought
maybe you wouldn't mind my sitting with you for a bit. I do feel so
beastly down on my luck, and you always cheer me up, you're so different
from any of the others."
Mary had begun, for perhaps the twentieth time, a letter to Reverend
Mother; but she was half glad of an excuse to put it away unfinished.
She too was in a wrapper, with her shining hair over her shoulders, but
she suggested a St. Ursula rather than a Medusa. There was no
comfortable chair in the room, but she drew the only one whose legs
could be depended upon, in front of a dying wood fire for Lady Dauntrey.
Eve sat for a few moments brushing her hair in a lazy, aimless way, and
staring at the red logs. "Perhaps," she said at last, "I shall have to
cheer _you_ up, though, when you've heard what I've come for.
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