ere afraid of her, and would fall into a fit of trembling, and
cry out that there was a wandering in her wits. And sometimes she would
entreat her, with humility, to sit down on the chair beside her bed, and
would look at her (as she sat there brooding) with a face that even the
rose-coloured curtains could not make otherwise than scared and wild.

The rose-coloured curtains blushed, in course of time, on Cleopatra's
bodily recovery, and on her dress--more juvenile than ever, to repair
the ravages of illness--and on the rouge, and on the teeth, and on
the curls, and on the diamonds, and the short sleeves, and the whole
wardrobe of the doll that had tumbled down before the mirror. They
blushed, too, now and then, upon an indistinctness in her speech which
she turned off with a girlish giggle, and on an occasional failing In
her memory, that had no rule in it, but came and went fantastically, as
if in mockery of her fantastic self.

But they never blushed upon a change in the new manner of her thought
and speech towards her daughter. And though that daughter often
came within their influence, they never blushed upon her loveliness
irradiated by a smile, or softened by the light of filial love, in its
stem beauty.

CHAPTER 38. Miss Tox improves an Old Acquaintance

The forlorn Miss Tox, abandoned by her friend Louisa Chick, and bereft
of Mr Dombey's countenance--for no delicate pair of wedding cards,
united by a silver thread, graced the chimney-glass in Princess's
Place, or the harpsichord, or any of those little posts of display
which Lucretia reserved for holiday occupation--became depressed in her
spirits, and suffered much from melancholy. For a time the Bird Waltz
was unheard in Princess's Place, the plants were neglected, and dust
collected on the miniature of Miss Tox's ancestor with the powdered head
and pigtail.

Miss Tox, however, was not of an age or of a disposition long to abandon
herself to unavailing regrets. Only two notes of the harpsichord were
dumb from disuse when the Bird Waltz again warbled and trilled in
the crooked drawing-room: only one slip of geranium fell a victim to
imperfect nursing, before she was gardening at her green baskets again,
regularly every morning; the powdered-headed ancestor had not been under
a cloud for more than six weeks, when Miss Tox breathed on his benignant
visage, and polished him up with a piece of wash-leather.

Still, Miss Tox was lonely, and at a loss.