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