Her hair was combed out like a fleecy vail down her back, and glittered with diamond powder until it resembled the gorgeous plumage of a tropical bird.
She formed so bright a center to the room that every eye instinctively wandered that way to admire her glittering clothing and fascinating face; and yet again, Margaret took her seat opposite with some uneasy feeling weighing upon her now which had weighed upon her before.
Almost immediately the extraordinary green orbs were lifted from their meditative study, and Madame Hesslein bowed her recognition, and smiled with honeyed sweetness.
"She has some special purpose in making my acquaintance!" thought Margaret.
Dinner over, the ladies scattered, some to their rooms, some to go walking--Margaret and Madame Hesslein simultaneously entered the drawing-room. They turned to each other, the glittering bird of Paradise, and the gentle ring-dove, with a resistless impulse of attraction, and each examined the other keenly.
"You are Miss Margaret Walsingham, a celebrity, even in America," quoth madame, blandly. "Your colonel was much talked of here for his bravery. I am quite delighted to meet the woman who has fought so spiritedly for the colonel's rights."
Margaret gazed earnestly at her; she was reading that artful simplicity of madame with regret, and pitying the fine woman whom the world had spoiled.
"Your praise is very disinterested, Madame Hesslein," returned she, simply. "I thank you for it. I am very strange here, and can't tell what the people say about my affairs. I had hoped that they knew nothing about me."
"Pshaw! my good lady, you can't expect to pass through life with your history and not excite remark," retorted Madame Hesslein, with a flirt of the jeweled fan. "No heroine does, be she a good or a bad one. Men must talk--give them something to talk about."
Margaret watched her spirited face with secret fascination.
"You are reading me," laughed madame, clanking her golden bracelet on her dainty wrist. "You are wondering what a woman of the world like me wants with a saint like yourself, are you not?"
"I am thinking that no doubt you have a purpose in view," said Margaret, struck by the unlovely shrewdness of the lady's speech.