The Chaperon

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - An old lady in a high drawing-room had had her chair moved close to the fire where she sat knitting and warming her knees. She was dressed in deep mourning; her face had a faded nobleness tempered however by the somewhat illiberal compression assumed by her lips in obedience to something that was passing in her mind. She was far from the lamp but though her eyes were fixed upon her active needles she was not looking at them. What she really saw was quite another train of affairs. The room was spacious and dim; the thick London fog had oozed into it even through its superior defences. It was full of dusky massive valuable things. The old lady sat motionless save for the regularity of her clicking needles which seemed as personal to her and as expressive as prolonged fingers. If she was thinking something out she was thinking it thoroughly. When she looked up on the entrance of a girl of twenty it might have been guessed that the appearance of this young lady was not an interruption of her meditation but rather a contribution to it. The young lady who was charming to behold was also in deep mourning which had a freshness if mourning can be fresh an air of having been lately put on.