"You look as if you hadn't been asleep
at all. You're to get up and have your frock put on. The Lady
Downstairs wants you in the drawing-room."
Two months earlier such a piece of information would have awakened
in the child a delirium of delight. But now her vitality was lowered
because her previously unawakened little soul had soared so high
and been so dashed down to cruel earth again. The brilliancy of
the Lady Downstairs had been dimmed as a candle is dimmed by the
light of the sun.
She felt only a vague wonder as she did as Andrews told her--wonder
at the strangeness of getting up to be dressed, as it seemed to
her, in the middle of the night.
"It's just the kind of thing that would happen in a house like
this," grumbled Andrews, as she put on her frock. "Just anything
that comes into their heads they think they've a right to do. I
suppose they have, too. If you're rich and aristocratic enough to
have your own way, why not take it? I would myself."
The big silk curls, all in a heap, fell almost to the child's hips.
The frock Andrews chose for her was a fairy thing.
"She IS a bit thin, to be sure," said the girl Anne. "But it points
her little face and makes her eyes look bigger."
"If her mother's got a Marquis, I wonder what she'll get," said
Andrews. "She's got a lot before her: this one!"
When the child entered the drawing-room, Andrews made her go in
alone, while she held herself, properly, a few paces back like a
lady in waiting.
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