"I wish the French madam'd come back agyne,"
he murmured, from half closed lips. "We 'aven't
come 'ere to be myde a spectacle of — not for no one."

And just then the seal-brown figure strolled away,
as serenely and impudently as she had come.
*Well,ofall !"

Letty's exclamation was stifled by the fact that as
the first young lady of distinction passed out a second
crossed her coming in. They took no notice of each
other, though the newcomer walked straight up to
Letty, not to stare but to toss up her chin with a hint
of laughter suppressed. Laughter, suppressed or un-
suppressed, was her note. She was all fair-haired,
blue-eyed vivacity. It was a relief to Letty that she
didn't stare. She twitched, she twisted, she pirouetted,
striking dull gleams from an embroidery studded
with turquoise and jade — ^but she hadn't the hard
imconscious arrogance of the other one.
All the same it pained Letty that great ladies should
be so beautiful. Not that this one was beautiful of

121




THE DUST FLOWER

face — she wasn't— only piquant — ^but the general
effect was beautiful. It showed what money and the
dressmaker could do. If she, Letty could have had
a dress and a hat like this ! — a blue or a green, it was
difficult to say which — ^with these strips of jade and
turquoise on a ground of the purplish-greenish-blue
she remembered as that of the monkshood in the old
farm garden in Canada — ^and the darlingest hat, with
one long feather beginning as green and graduating
through every impossible shade of green and blue till
it ended in a monkshood tip. . ..
