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This etext was scanned by David Price, email
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Mohua Sen, Bridie, Francine Smith and David.
The Chaperon
by Henry James
CHAPTER I.
An old lady, in a high drawing-room, had had her chair moved close to
the fire, where she sat knitting and warming her knees. She was dressed
in deep mourning; her face had a faded nobleness, tempered, however,
by the somewhat illiberal compression assumed by her lips in
obedience to something that was passing in her mind. She was far from
the lamp, but though her eyes were fixed upon her active needles she
was not looking at them. What she really saw was quite another train of
affairs. The room was spacious and dim; the thick London fog had
oozed into it even through its superior defences. It was full of dusky,
massive, valuable things. The old lady sat motionless save for the
regularity of her clicking needles, which seemed as personal to her and
as expressive as prolonged fingers. If she was thinking something out,
she was thinking it thoroughly.
When she looked up, on the entrance of a girl of twenty, it might have
been guessed that the appearance of this young lady was not an
interruption of her meditation, but rather a contribution to it. The young
lady, who was charming to behold, was also in deep mourning, which
had a freshness, if mourning can be fresh, an air of having been lately
put on. She went straight to the bell beside the chimney-piece and
pulled it, while in her other hand she held a sealed and directed letter.
Her companion glanced in silence at the letter; then she looked still
harder at her work. The girl hovered near the fireplace, without
speaking, and after a due, a dignified interval the butler appeared in
response to the bell. The time had been sufficient to make the silence
between the ladies seem long. The younger one asked the butler to see
that her letter should be posted; and after he had gone out she moved
vaguely about the room, as if to give her grandmother--for such was the
elder personage--a chance to begin a colloquy of which she herself
preferred not to strike the first note. As equally with herself her
companion was on the face of it capable of