tatuesque, but then
she did not feel statuesque just at this moment. She could have
dressed herself to suit this style of hair; she could have worn it
with confidence if she had got it up herself; but here she was the
victim of an experiment. She felt like a school-girl about for the
first time to appear in public in a long dress, and she was terribly
afraid her husband would laugh at her. If he had any such inclination,
he courteously suppressed it. He said the massive simplicity of this
dressing of the hair suited her admirably. Mrs. Lavender said that
Paterson was an invaluable woman; and then they went down to the
dining-room on the ground floor, where luncheon had been laid.

The man who had opened the door waited on the two strangers: the
invaluable Paterson acted as a sort of hench-woman to her mistress,
standing by her chair and supplying her wants. She also had the
management of a small pair of silver scales, in which pretty nearly
everything that Mrs. Lavender took in the way of solid food was
carefully and accurately weighed. The conversation was chiefly
alimentary, and Sheila listened with a growing wonder to the
description of the devices by which the ladies of Mrs. Lavender's
acquaintance were wont to cheat fatigue or win an appetite or preserve
their color. When by accident the girl herself was appealed to, she
had to confess to an astonishing ignorance of all such resources. She
knew nothing of the relative strengths and effects of wines, though
she was frankly ready to make any experiment her husband recommended.
She knew what camphor was, but had never heard of bismuth. On
cross-examination she had to admit that eau-de-cologne did not seem to
her likely to be a pleasant liquor before going to a ball. Did she not
know the effect on brown hair of washing it in soda-water every night?
She was equably confessing her ignorance on all such points, when she
was startled by a sudden question from Mrs. Lavender. Did she know
what she was doing?

She looked at her plate: there was on it a piece of cheese to
which she had thoughtlessly helped herself. Somebody had called it
Roquefort--that was all she knew.

"You have as much there, child, as would kill a ploughman; and I
suppose you would not have had the sense to leave it."

"Is it poison?" said Sheila, regarding her plate with horror.

"All cheese is. Paterson, my scales."

She had Sheila's plate brought to her, and the proper modicum of
cheese cut, we