Immediately above
the dressing-table I observed a large portrait of Colonel Menendez
dressed as I had imagined he should be dressed when I had first set
eyes on him, in tropical riding kit, and holding a broad-brimmed hat in
his hand. A strikingly handsome, arrogant figure he made, uncannily
like the Velasquez in the library.
At the face of Madame de Staemer I looked long and searchingly. She had
not neglected the art of the toilette. Blinds tempered the sunlight
which flooded her room; but that, failing the service of rouge, Madame
had been pale this morning, I perceived immediately. In some subtle way
the night had changed her. Something was gone out of her face, and
something come into it. I thought, and lived to remember the thought,
that it was thus Marie Antoinette might have looked when they told her
how the drums had rolled in the Place de la Revolution on that morning
of the twenty-first of January.
"Oh, M. Knox," she said, sadly, "you are there, I see. Come and sit
here beside me, my friend. Val, dear, remain. Is this Inspector
Aylesbury who wishes to speak to me?"
The Inspector, who had entered with all the confidence in the world,
seemed to lose some of it in the presence of this grand lady, who was
so little impressed by the dignity of his office.
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