Mrs. Birch, flinging herself
forward, gasped out: "If you'd just give him a
caramel...there, in that box on the dressing-table...it's
the only earthly thing to stop him..." and when Anna had
proffered this sop to her assailant, and he had withdrawn
with it beneath the bedspread, his mistress sank back with a
laugh.
"Isn't he a beauty? The Prince gave him to me down at Nice
the other day--but he's perfectly awful," she confessed,
beaming intimately on her visitor. In the roseate penumbra
of the bed-curtains she presented to Anna's startled gaze an
odd chromo-like resemblance to Sophy Viner, or a suggestion,
rather, of what Sophy Viner might, with the years and in
spite of the powder-puff, become. Larger, blonder, heavier-
featured, she yet had glances and movements that
disturbingly suggested what was freshest and most engaging
in the girl; and as she stretched her bare plump arm across
the bed she seemed to be pulling back the veil from dingy
distances of family history.
"Do sit down, if there's a place to sit on," she cordially
advised; adding, as Anna took the edge of a chair hung with
miscellaneous raiment: "My singing takes so much time that I
don't get a chance to walk the fat off--that's the worst of
being an artist."
Anna murmured an assent. "I hope it hasn't inconvenienced
you to see me; I told Mr. Birch--"
"Mr. WHO?" the recumbent beauty asked; and then: "Oh,
JIMMY!" she faintly laughed, as if more for her own
enlightenment than Anna's.
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