"He's nane sa dafty as he looks," thought Mrs. Jasher, who was Scotch,
although she claimed to be cosmopolitan. "With his mummies he is all
right, but outside those he might be difficult to manage. And these
things," she glanced round the shadowy room, crowded with the dead
and their earthly belongings. "I don't think I would care to marry the
British Museum. Too much like hard work, and I am not so young as I
was."
The near mirror--a polished silver one, which had belonged, ages ago, to
some coquette of Memphis--denied this uncomplimentary thought, for Mrs.
Jasher did not look a day over thirty, although her birth certificate
set her down as forty-five. In the lamplight she might have passed for
even younger, so carefully had she preserved what remained to her of
youth. She assuredly was somewhat stout, and never had been so tall
as she desired to be. But the lines of her plump figure were still
discernible in the cunningly cut gown, and she carried her little self
with such mighty dignity that people overlooked the mortifying height of
a trifle over five feet. Her features were small and neat, but her large
blue eyes were so noticeable and melting that those on whom she turned
them ignored the lack of boldness in chin and nose. Her hair was brown
and arranged in the latest fashion, while her complexion was so fresh
and pink that, if she did paint--as jealous women averred--she must
have been quite an artist with the hare's foot and the rouge pot and the
necessary powder puff.
Mrs. Jasher's clothes repaid the thought she expended upon them, and
she was artistic in this as in other things. Dressed in a crocus-yellow
gown, with short sleeves to reveal her beautiful arms, and cut low to
display her splendid bust, she looked perfectly dressed. A woman would
have declared the wide-netted black lace with which the dress was draped
to be cheap, and would have hinted that the widow wore too many jewels
in her hair, on her corsage, round her arms, and ridiculously gaudy
rings on her fingers. This might have been true, for Mrs. Jasher
sparkled like the Milky Way at every movement; but the gleam of gold
and the flash of gems seemed to suit her opulent beauty. Her slightest
movement wafted around her a strange Chinese perfume, which she
obtained--so she said--from a friend of her late husband's who was in
the British Embassy at Pekin. No one possessed this especial perfume but
Mrs. Jasher, and anyone who had previously met her, meeting her in the
darkness, could have guessed at her identity. With a smile to show
her white teeth, with her golden-hued dress and glittering jewels, the
pretty widow glowed in that glimmering room like a tropical bird.
The Professor raised his dreamy eyes and laid the beetle on one side,
when his brain fully grasped that this charming vision was waiting to
be entertained. She was better to look upon even than the beloved
scarabeus, and he advanced to shake hands as though she had just entered
the room. Mrs. Jasher--knowing his ways--rose to extend her hand, and
the two small, stout figures looked absurdly like a pair of chubby
Dresden ornaments which had stepped from the mantelshelf.