"Her old age!" Eugenia wondered when she thought old age would begin. She looked a thousand years old already to Eugenia. Heavens! Think of ever being old like that, yourself. What use _could_ there be in living if you were old and reduced for your amusement to writing down dates and things in a journal! "If Mademoiselle will step into her own room," said Josephine. Eugenia came to herself with a start. She had been standing in the middle of the room staring at Mlle. Vallet's back. But she had been thinking about Neale Crittenden, about those deep-set eyes of his, and how his face was lighted up when he smiled. When he smiled at her, Eugenia felt like moving from wherever she was and going to stand close beside him. What made her feel so? It was like a black-art. There was that girl at school who had been bewitched by the Breton mission-priest,--bewitched so that she fell into a fever if she could not see him every day. "There! Sit there!" said Josephine, pressing her competently into an easy chair, and beginning to undo her hooks and eyes. "I haven't much time. Mademoiselle is so late in coming in. Just a little cold-cream--this horrible southern sun burns so! Oh, I can feel this awful Roman dust thick on every hair! I do wish--without seeming to presume--I do _wish_ that Mademoiselle would consent to wear a veil--everybody does." Eugenia moved her head from one side to the other wearily. How Josephine did chatter! She never had a quiet moment, _never_, and she was so _tired_. Feeling the supple, smooth professional fingers beginning to put on the cold cream, she held her head still and thought. Very bitter thoughts and bewildered ... of a person betrayed. She _was_ betrayed! She had done everything ... everything that she had known how to do. She had spared neither time nor money nor effort. She had worked (and she hated to work) she had _worked_ to learn all the things she should know. She had beaten Marise at her own game. She talked better French than she, so her diction teacher said; and ever so much more distinguished English--she _never_ made those slips into Americanisms or Gallicisms that Marise did. At least not in conversation, sometimes she still thought in American. She knew ever so much more about dressing than Marise, and about lace, and about manners. She had come to the point at last of being sure of her manners, of being able to sit down, instinctively composing herself so that she would look well from all angles, of not having to think of how to shake hands or leave a room, any more than she thought of the adjustment of a gown that Josephine had put on her. Whereas Marise still fumbled at the back of her neck at times to make sure of a hook, or had that common trick of feeling her hair to see if it were in order. Marise had stood still in all that, and she had gone forward to the goal. But as she reached it...!