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“It’s so difficult to combine that with a light that you can’t be
too much seen by,” laughed Mrs. Tower.
I had no notion what her age was. When I was quite a young
man she was a married woman a good deal older than I, but now she
treated me as her contemporary. She constantly said that she made no
secret of her age, which was forty, and then added with a smile that
all women took five years off. She never sought to conceal the fact
that she dyed her hair (it was a very pretty brown with reddish tints),
and she said she did this because hair was hideous while it was going
grey; as soon as hers was white she would cease to dye it.
“Then they’ll say what a young face I have.”
Meanwhile it was painted, though with discretion, and her eyes
owed not a little of their vivacity to art. She was a handsome woman,
exquisitely gowned, and in the sombre glow of the alabaster lamps
did not look a day more than the forty she gave herself.
“It is only at my dressing-table that I can suffer the naked
brightness of a thirty-two-candle electric bulb,” she added with
smiling cynicism. “There I need it to tell me first the hideous truth
and then to enable me to take the necessary steps to correct it.”
We gossiped pleasantly about our common friends and Mrs.
Tower brought me up to date in the scandal of the day. After
roughing it here and there it was very agreeable to sit in a
comfortable chair, the fire burning brightly on the hearth, charming
tea-things set out on a charming table, and talk with this amusing,
attractive woman. She treated me as a prodigal returned from his
husks and was disposed to make much of me. She prided herself on
her dinner-parties; she took no less trouble to have her guests suitably
assorted than to give them excellent food; and there were few persons
who did not look upon it as a treat to be bidden to one of them. Now
she fixed a date and asked me whom I would like to meet.
“There’s only one thing I must tell you. If Jane Fowler is still
here I shall have to put it off.”
“Who is Jane Fowler?” I asked.
Mrs. Tower gave a rueful smile.
“Jane Fowler is my cross.”
“Oh!”
“Do you remember a photograph that I used to have on the
piano before I had my room done, of a woman in a tight dress with
tight sleeves and a gold locket, with her hair drawn back from a broad