"Bring me a looking-glass. How do I appear to people?" she
said languidly.
"Well--a little worn," answered Elizabeth, eyeing her as a critic eyes
a doubtful painting; fetching the glass she enabled Lucetta to survey
herself in it, which Lucetta anxiously did.
"I wonder if I wear well, as times go!" she observed after a while.
"Yes--fairly.
"Where am I worst?"
"Under your eyes--I notice a little brownness there."
"Yes. That is my worst place, I know. How many years more do you think I
shall last before I get hopelessly plain?"
There was something curious in the way in which Elizabeth, though
the younger, had come to play the part of experienced sage in these
discussions. "It may be five years," she said judicially. "Or, with a
quiet life, as many as ten. With no love you might calculate on ten."
Lucetta seemed to reflect on this as on an unalterable, impartial
verdict. She told Elizabeth-Jane no more of the past attachment she had
roughly adumbrated as the experiences of a third person; and Elizabeth,
who in spite of her philosophy was very tender-hearted, sighed that
night in bed at the thought that her pretty, rich Lucetta did not treat
her to the full confidence of names and dates in her confessions. For by
the "she" of Lucetta's story Elizabeth had not been beguiled.
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