Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/579

the toilet was finished, and in less time than Clemency expected. She sent away her woman, took up one of the branching candlesticks and held it so that she could see herself in the long- mirror—startled at this sight of herself in forgotten finery. The mirror framed for her a woman in her prime, dressed in full toilet such as was the vogue under the last of the Stuarts; for in her country seclusion Lady Clemency had not yet felt herself constrained to adopt either the towering headdress or the Dutch hoop which Mary of England and Orange had brought with her in 1689. Full and flowing, the lines of her skirt gave Clemency's fine proportions their true grace; the stiffness of the stomacher could not add more than a delicate rigidity to her figure. The lace collar drooped widely, giving the utmost breadth to her beautiful shoulders, while it sprang out a little stiffly from the nape to frame her face. Over her left ear she wore with a looping of pearls a rosette of the Earl's favorite color, apple green. Of all the black ribbons and crêpe sashes and gauzes set out by her woman, she donned not one shred that night. Instead of these she drew from her press a long broad scarf, green like her ear[knot, but heavily fringed with gold—a man's sword-sash. There was a stain upon it; she tied it carefully to hide the rusty blot. Then she put out the lights in the wall sconces and left the room, with a taper in her hand. Half-way down the first flight, she swept back, returned to the press, and fetched from it a large, battered, tarnished silver coin. Its detail showed very distinctly in the candle-light as she threaded it on to the long chain she wore on her neck. One side of the disc bore a three-masted galleon in full sail; on the other were cut the picture of a church and the words Sancta Maria de Ria, with the date of coining—1696—which was the date of the Earl's death. For a moment she let the coin hang outside her bodice, then

Clemency looked long at the Picture