While this colloquy was going on Lily was feeling more and more surprised, for somehow Aunt Cosy looked utterly different from what she remembered her as having looked twelve years ago. She had then appeared to Lily, a child of nine years of age, a very smart, fashionable-looking lady, wearing beautiful clothes. She now looked slightly absurd.

Meanwhile M. Popeau told himself that the Countess must once have been extremely handsome. He judged her to be about sixty, but she was tall, well built, and looked strong and active—in a word, younger than her years.

She wore a plaid skirt, one of those large patterns dear to the Parisienne’s heart. Her plain white blouse was cut like a man’s shirt and gave her, to a foreigner’s eye, an English look—as did also the now old-fashioned tie-cravat which she wore pinned to the blouse with a large emerald pin. The pin attracted M. Popeau’s attention, for it was set with an emerald which was, in his judgment, of considerable value. Doubtless it had belonged to the Count’s father. It was the sort of tie-pin a foppish man of wealth and position might have worn in the early thirties of the last century.

But what in a very different way impressed both Lily Fairfield and M. Popeau was the Countess’s singular-looking face and peculiar eyes. Her face, with its good, clearly-marked features and finely-drawn if narrow-lipped mouth, was of a most unbecoming colour, a kind of dusky red, which M. Popeau knew to mean some form of heart trouble. One of her eyes was green, the other blue.

23She wore a curious and most elaborate “front,” bright chestnut-auburn in tint, consisting of masses of tight little curls. It was evidently the sort of coiffure which had been worn when Countess Polda was a young woman. Now it gave a touch of the grotesque to her appearance, the more so that when she turned round to shut the door it became apparent that she also wore what used, many years ago, to be called a “bun.”

23

Still, it was evident to M. Popeau that the person now standing before him was what is called, in common parlance, a woman of the world. She accepted his explanation of his presence with amiability, and expressed in well-chosen, voluble French her gratitude for his kindness to her young niece—he noticed she said “niece.”

“It is still to be Aunt Cosy, is it not, dear child?” she drew the surprised Lily affectionately into her strong arms and kissed her on both cheeks. “It will be very pleasant, 

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