Miss Aldclyffe was now arrayed in a white dressing-gown, and dropped languidly into an easy-chair, pushed up before the glass.  The instincts of her sex and her own practice told Cytherea the next movement.  She let Miss Aldclyffe’s hair fall about her shoulders, and began to arrange it.  It proved to be all real; a satisfaction.

Miss Aldclyffe was musingly looking on the floor, and the operation went on for some minutes in silence.  At length her thoughts seemed to turn to the present, and she lifted her eyes to the glass.

‘Why, what on earth are you doing with my head?’ she exclaimed, with widely opened eyes.  At the words she felt the back of Cytherea’s little hand tremble against her neck.

‘Perhaps you prefer it done the other fashion, madam?’ said the maiden.

’No, no; that’s the fashion right enough, but you must make more show of my hair than that, or I shall have to buy some, which God forbid!’

‘It is how I do my own,’ said Cytherea naively, and with a sweetness of tone that would have pleased the most acrimonious under favourable circumstances; but tyranny was in the ascendant with Miss Aldclyffe at this moment, and she was assured of palatable food for her vice by having felt the trembling of Cytherea’s hand.

‘Yours, indeed! Your hair!  Come, go on.’  Considering that Cytherea possessed at least five times as much of that valuable auxiliary to woman’s beauty as the lady before her, there was at the same time some excuse for Miss Aldclyffe’s outburst.  She remembered herself, however, and said more quietly, ’Now then, Graye —­By-the-bye, what do they call you downstairs?’

‘Mrs. Graye,’ said the handmaid.

’Then tell them not to do any such absurd thing—­not but that it is quite according to usage; but you are too young yet.’

This dialogue tided Cytherea safely onward through the hairdressing till the flowers and diamonds were to be placed upon the lady’s brow.  Cytherea began arranging them tastefully, and to the very best of her judgment.

‘That won’t do,’ said Miss Aldclyffe harshly.

‘Why?’

‘I look too young—­an old dressed doll.’

‘Will that, madam?’

‘No, I look a fright—­a perfect fright!’

‘This way, perhaps?’

‘Heavens!  Don’t worry me so.’  She shut her lips like a trap.

Having once worked herself up to the belief that her head-dress was to be a failure that evening, no cleverness of Cytherea’s in arranging it could please her.  She continued in a smouldering passion during the remainder of the performance, keeping her lips firmly closed, and the muscles of her body rigid.  Finally, snatching up her gloves, and taking her handkerchief and fan in her hand, she silently sailed out of the room, without betraying the least consciousness of another woman’s presence behind her.