''Have you no other gown,'' I say, ''than this plain brown thing you always wear?''
She says she has not. I take, from my press, a velvet gown, and have her try it. She bares her arms unwillingly, steps out of her skirt and turns, in a kind of modesty, away from my eyes. The gown is narrow. I tug at the hooks. I settle the folds of cloth about her hips, then go to my box for a brooch—that brooch of brilliants—and pin it carefully over her heart.⑥思⑥兔⑥網⑥文⑥檔⑥共⑥享⑥與⑥在⑥線⑥閱⑥讀⑥
Then I stand her before the glass.
Margaret comes, and takes her for me.
I have grown used to her, to the life, the warmth, the particularity of her; she has become, not the gullible girl of a villainous plot—not Suky Tawdry—but a girl with a history, with hates and likings. Now all at once I see how near to me in face and figure she''ll come, and I understand, as if for the first time, what it is that Richard and I mean to do. I place my face against the post of my bed and watch her, gazing at herself in a rising satisfaction, turning a little to the left, a little to the right, brushing the creases from her skirt, settling her flesh more comfortably into the seams of the gown. ''If my aunty could see me!'' she says, growing pink; and I think, th