"And his sudden going-away," added Miss Abercrombie, eagerly leaning forward.
Julia Shane stirred in her big chair. To-night she wore an old-fashioned gown of black lace, very tight at the waist and very low in the neck, which displayed boldly the boniness of her strong shoulders. "I don't think he intended slighting any one," she said. "He was called away by a telegram. A Governor, you know, has duties. When Colonel Shane was alive . . ." And she launched into an anecdote of twenty years earlier, told amusingly and skilfully, leading Mrs. Julis Harrison and Miss Abercrombie for the time being far away from the behavior of the Governor. She spoke of her husband as she always did, in terms of the most profound devotion.
Mrs. Harrison was a handsome stout woman, a year or two older than Julia Shane but, unlike her, given to following the fashions closely. She preserved an illusion of youth by much lacing and secret recourse to rouge, a vain deception before Julia Shane, who knew rouge in all its degrees in Paris where rouge was used both skilfully and frankly. She moved, the older woman, with a slight pomposity, conscious always of the dignity of her position as the richest woman in the Town; for she was richer by a million or two than Julia Shane, to whom she acceded nothing save the prestige which was Cypress Hill and its tradition.
Miss Abercrombie, a spinster of uncertain age, wore her hair in a pompadour and spoke French, as she believed, perfectly. It was necessary that she believe in her own French, for she it was who instructed the young girls of the Town in French and in history, drawing upon a background derived from a dozen summers spent at one time or another on the continent. Throughout Julia Shane's long anecdote, Miss Abercrombie interrupted from time to time with little fluttering sighs of appreciation, with "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" and sudden observations of how much pleasanter the Town had been in the old days. When the anecdote at last was finished, she it was who brought the conversation by a sudden heroic gesture back to the Governor.
"And tell me, dear Julia," she said. "Is there no news of Lily? . . . Has nothing come of the Governor's devotion?"
