Fanny Brassfield, whose country house was not far away, sometimes
dropped in to see Lilla.
"Hello, David," she said, sitting down beside the tea table, and
crossing her knees. "How's old Marco Polo to-day?"
Her bony cheeks were rosy from the cold wind; her green eyes glittered
with health; and her whole countenance, under a tilted, putty-colored
toque, expressed her full satisfaction with what she had found in life.
She had no nerves, no remorse nor thwarted ambitions. Because of her
wealth, unscrupulousness, and small imagination, her one constant
craving--for novel experiences--was easily satisfied. A long cigarette
holder between her thin lips, one putty-colored lisle stocking showing
to the knee, she exhaled, together with an odor of Florentine
orris-root, a ruthless vigor and appetency for pleasure. Lilla thought
with envy of all this woman had never imagined nor felt, all that she
had been able to enjoy without self-questioning.
How simple life was for some people!
"I'm giving a little party. No doubt it's useless to ask you----"
Fanny Brassfield interrupted herself to stare at Hamoud-bin-Said, who
had entered the room without a sound.
He had on a long, dark-blue joho, or robe, embellished down its open
front with a tracery of gold. Underneath he wore the kanzu, the under
robe of fine white cotton, embroidered round the neck with a bit of red
needlework, and reaching to his boots of soft, black leather. Bound
his waist was a blue-and-gold sash, from which protruded the silver
hilt of his J-shaped Zanzibar dagger. His head was covered, as always
in the house, with a white embroidered skullcap. In one small hand he
held a Venetian goblet, in the other a bottle of medicine.
It was the hour for Dr. Fallows' prescription.
"Really," Fanny Brassfield exclaimed, in her high-pitched, insolent
voice, "I must get myself one of these--what is he again? Zanzibari?"
Hamoud, towering there in the attire of an Omân gentleman--which she
took for a specially effective livery--contemplated the great Mrs.
Brassfield. His full eyelids were dreamily lowered over his lustrous
eyes. His long, straight nose seemed narrower than usual, perhaps from
disdain. But his clear-cut carnelian mouth, vivid between his faint
mustache and his delicate beard, did not change expression, although he
was calling the great Mrs. Brassfield a female beneath the contempt of
a Muscat slaver, the progeny of camels and alley dogs, and other names
besides. As if regretfully he turned away to David Verne, measured out
the solution of arsenic, and presented the goblet, a tapering treasure
covered with gilt and crimson protuberances, an antique that had stood
before men in the wave-lapped palaces of Venice, brimming with Greek
wine, or maybe with Renaissance poison.
David Verne himself raised the goblet.
"Dr. Fallows has really done wonders, hasn't he?"
"Wonders," Lilla echoed with a smile.
In the hall, as she was leaving, Fanny Brassfield said to Lilla:
"By the way, Anna Zanidov is in town. She was asking after you."
Without moving, Lilla murmured slowly:
"Ah, she wants to tell my fortune again, perhaps?"
"She stopped doing that. It got too uncanny. You know yourself that
everything she ever predicted came to pass. Including three deaths;
that is, two besides----"
"One must believe that she sees it," Lilla assented, and, frozen by her
thoughts, shuddered violently. "Yes, too uncanny! She did well to
give it up."
"Especially as people were getting to be afraid of her," said Fanny
Brassfield, while passing through the front doorway.