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“I dressed in a hurry. I dare say I put on too much rouge.”
“Oh, is it rouge? I thought it was natural. Otherwise I shouldn’t
have mentioned it.” She gave Gilbert a shy little smile. “You know,
Marion and I were at school together. You would never think it to
look at us now, would you? But of course I’ve lived a very quiet life.”
I do not know what she meant by these remarks; it was almost
incredible that she made them in complete simplicity; but anyhow
they goaded Mrs. Tower to such a fury that she flung her own vanity
to the winds. She smiled brightly.
“We shall neither of us see fifty again, Jane,” she said.
If the observation was meant to discomfit the widow it failed.
“Gilbert says I mustn’t acknowledge to more than forty-nine
for his sake,” she answered blandly.
Mrs. Tower’s hands trembled slightly, but she found a retort.
“There is of course a certain disparity of age between you,” she
smiled.
“'Twenty-seven years,” said Jane. “Do you think it’s too much?
Gilbert says I’m very young for my age. I told you I shouldn’t like to
marry a man with one foot in the grave.”
I was really obliged to laugh, and Gilbert laughed too. His
laughter was frank and boyish. It looked as though he were amused at
everything Jane said. But Mrs. Tower was almost at the end of her
tether, and I was afraid that unless relief came she would for once
forget that she was a woman of the world. I came to the rescue as best
I could.
“I suppose you’re very busy buying your trousseau,” I said.
“No. I wanted to get my things from the dressmaker in
Liverpool I‘ve been to ever since I was first married. But Gilbert
won’t let me. He’s very masterful, and of course he has wonderful
taste.”
She looked at him with a little affectionate smile, demurely, as
though she were a girl of seventeen.
Mrs. Tower went quite pale under her make-up.
“We’re going to Italy for our honeymoon. Gilbert has never
had a chance of studying Renaissance architecture, and of course it’s
important for an architect to see things for himself. And we shall stop
in Paris on the way and get my clothes there.”
“Do you expect to be away long?”