Miss Templeman deposited herself on the sofa in her former flexuous
position, and throwing her arm above her brow--somewhat in the pose of
a well-known conception of Titian's--talked up at Elizabeth-Jane
invertedly across her forehead and arm.
"I must tell you something," she said. "I wonder if you have suspected
it. I have only been mistress of a large house and fortune a little
while."
"Oh--only a little while?" murmured Elizabeth-Jane, her countenance
slightly falling.
"As a girl I lived about in garrison towns and elsewhere with my father,
till I was quite flighty and unsettled. He was an officer in the army. I
should not have mentioned this had I not thought it best you should know
the truth."
"Yes, yes." She looked thoughtfully round the room--at the little square
piano with brass inlayings, at the window-curtains, at the lamp, at the
fair and dark kings and queens on the card-table, and finally at the
inverted face of Lucetta Templeman, whose large lustrous eyes had such
an odd effect upside down.
Elizabeth's mind ran on acquirements to an almost morbid degree. "You
speak French and Italian fluently, no doubt," she said. "I have not been
able to get beyond a wretched bit of Latin yet."
"Well, for that matter, in my native isle speaking French does not go
for much.
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