Mrs. Abbott, who dressed with a
profound regard for fashion, had long since concluded that her mother's
steadfast alliance with the past not only became her but was a distinct
family asset. Only a woman of her overpowering position could afford it.
Mrs. Groome's skin had never felt the guilty caress of cold-cream or
powder, and if it was mahogany in tint and deeply wrinkled, it was at least
as respectable as her past. In her day that now bourgeois adjective--twin
to genteel--had been synchronous with the equally obsolete word swell, but
it had never occurred to even the more modern Mrs. Abbott and her select
inner circle of friends, dwelling on family estates in the San Mateo
valley, to change in this respect at least with the changing times.
V
Alexina had washed the powder from her own fresh face and put on a morning
frock of green and brown gingham, made not by her mother's dressmaker but
by her sister's. Her soft dusky hair, regardless of the fashion of the
moment, was brushed back from her forehead and coiled at the base of her
beautiful little head. Her long widely set gray eyes, their large irises
very dark and noticeably brilliant even for youth, had the favor of black
lashes as fine and lusterless as her hair, and very narrow black polished
eyebrows. Her skin was a pale olive lightly touched with color, although
the rather large mouth with its definitely curved lips was scarlet.
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