Her black wig, with its long corkscrew curls, was
carefully adjusted; her rouge and powder were artistically laid on, her
eyebrows elaborately pointed, and in so far she looked as she always
looked when visible to anyone but her maid. But her figure wanted
bracing up, so to speak, and looked shrunken and shrivelled in the old
cashmere dressing-robe, from which at that early hour she had not
emerged. Her fingers--long, lean and yellow--were decorated with some
half-dozen valuable rings. Increasing years had not tended to make her
hands steadier than Janet remembered them as being when she last saw her
ladyship; and of late it had become a matter of some difficulty with her
to keep her head quite still: it seemed possessed by an unaccountable
desire to imitate the shaking of her hands. She was seated in an
easy-chair as Janet entered the room. Her breakfast equipage was on a
small table at her elbow.
As the door closed behind Janet, she stood still and curtsied.
Lady Chillington placed her glass to her eye, and with a lean forefinger
beckoned to Janet to draw near. Janet advanced, her eyes fixed steadily
on those of Lady Chillington.
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