A Fascinating Weird Story of
Voodoo and Witchcraft is
The Tortoise-Shell Cat
IN SPITE of your care to reserve a room for me, Miss Annette Lee called me into her office yesterday and begged me to share it with a new girl.
It seems that Vida is the only child of a very old friend of hers, Felix di Monserreau, a rich Louisiana planter. Miss Lee says she thinks I may have a good influence over my new room-mate, but she managed to evade my tactful inquiry as to what Vida's vices might be. She did seem awfully disturbed. She said that she appreciated my nice attitude; and if I found the companionship disturbed me, would I report it to her immediately? She was so agitated she just couldn't look me in the face. I can’t imagine what can be the matter with Vida.
So far, my new room-mate appears to be rather nice. Her father has been most generous and our room is the envy of all the other girls. I would have written you earlier, mother, but we've been getting our new things settled.
Vida wants everything to go with her particular style of beauty! She confessed that she was perfectly miserable if she didn't have a background that suited her, and that she knew I wouldn't mind—particularly as she was willing to pay for the decorations. So she has the room decorated in the most stunning fashion, in shades of orange and dull green, with heaps and heaps of down cushions. She says she loves to lie around on a pile of cushions, like a cat.
I wish you could see her. She's really a type of girl to attract attention anywhere with her dead-white skin, her dark red lips, her black hair and her eyes—. Her eyes are quite the queerest I've ever seen. They are narrow, long, slumbrous, with drooping lids through which she looks at one in her peculiar way. The iris is a kind of pale golden brown that gives the impression of warm yellow. When dusk comes, I've seen the pupil glowing with some strange iridescence, the iris a narrow yellow rim about it; for all the world, it makes me think of a cat's eye.
Don't forget to tell Cousin Edgar to send me the necklace he promised to bring me from Egypt. I've told the girls about it, and they're dying to see it.
YOUR ALTHEA.
The same to the same:
. . .Studies are going forward nicely. Nothing new, except a couple of rather queer things about my room-mate. I thought I'd better write you first, before saying anything to Miss Lee about it, Perhaps I'm only imagining things, anyway.
Vida is certainly a very odd girl,
