“How good you are!” exclaimed Berthe, looking and feeling grateful for this unlooked-for solution of her difficulty.
“It is a consolation to me, Madame la Comtesse,” replied Mademoiselle Florine with a sigh, “and I need a little now and then!”
We wished her good-morning. “Let us go back now to Alexandrine,” said Berthe; “I hope Mrs. Clifford has made up her mind by this time.” But the hope was vain. Mrs. Clifford was standing with her back to the long mirror, looking at herself as reflected in a hand-glass that she turned so as to view her head in every possible aspect, while Mr. Clifford looked on. “Do you think it does?” she inquired as we came up to her.
“I think a darker shade would suit you better,” I said; “that pale pink has no mercy on one’s complexion.”
“I’ve tried on nearly every bonnet on the table,” she said, looking very miserable, “and they don’t any of them seem to do.”
“Madame will not understand that the first condition of a bonnet’s suiting, after the complexion of course, is that the hair should be dressed with regard to it,” interposed Madame Alexandrine, who I could see by her flushed face and nervous manner was, as she would say herself, _à bout de patience_; “these bonnets are all made for the _coiffure à la mode_, whereas madame wears _un peigne à galerie_.”
“_Dieu!_ but it is six months since the _peigne à galerie_ has been heard of!”
I suggested, in aid of this undeniable argument, that the comb should be suppressed.
“Oh! dear, no, I wouldn’t give it up for the world!” said Mrs. Clifford, with the emphatic manner she might have used if I had proposed her giving up her spectacles.
“Yes,” said Madame Alexandrine, “I will make one for madame after a _modèle à part_.”
“But then it will be dowdy and old-fashioned,” demurred the Englishwoman.
“Then let madame sacrifice _le peigne à galerie_! What sacrifice is it, after all? Nobody wears them now; they belong to a past age,” argued Madame Alexandrine, appealing to me.
“This one was a present from my husband,” replied Mrs. Clifford, in a tone that seemed to say: “You understand, there is nothing more to be said.”
I did not dare look at Berthe. Luckily she was beside me, so I could not see her face, but I saw the muff go up in a very expressive way, and she suddenly disappeared into a little _salon_ to the left, set apart for caps and _coiffures de bal_. I heard a smothered “burst,” and a treacherous _armoire à glace_ revealed her thrown back in an arm-chair, stuffing her handkerchief into her mouth, and convulsed with laughter.