Manslaughter

								

Benny trying to arrange her life for her.
"I contrive to be fairly happy, thank you, Benny. I've got to leave
you, because I have an engagement at Eleanor's at four, and it's ten
minutes before now."
"Lydia, it's ten miles!"
"Ten miles--ten minutes."
"You'll be killed if you drive so recklessly."
"No Benny, because I drive very well."
"You'll be arrested then."
"Even less."
"How can you be so sure?"
That was something that it was better not to tell, so Lydia went away
laughing, leaving Miss Bennett to wonder, as she always did after one of
these interviews, how it was possible to feel so superior to Lydia when
they were apart and so ineffectual when they were together. She always
came to the same conclusion--that she was betrayed by her own fineness;
that she was more aware of shades, of traditions than this little
daughter of a workingman. Lydia was not little. She was half a foot
taller than Adeline Bennett's own modest five-feet-two, but the
adjective expressed a latent wish. Miss Bennett often introduced it into
her descriptions. A nice little man, a clever little woman, a dear
little person were some of her favorite tags. They made her bulk larger
in her own vision.
The little daughter of the workingman ran upstairs for her hat. She
found her maid, Evans, engaged in polishing her jewels. The rite of
polishing Miss Thorne's jewels took place in the bathroom, which was
also a dressing room, containing long mirrors, a dressing table,
cupboards with glass doors through which Miss Thorne's bright hats and
beribboned underclothes showed faintly. It was carpeted and curtained
and larger than many a hall bedroom.
Here Evans, a pale, wistful English girl, was spreading out the jewelry
as she finished each piece, laying them on a white towel where the rays
of the afternoon sun fell upon them--the cabochon ruby like a dome of
frozen blood, the flat, clear diamond as blue as ice, and the band of
emeralds and diamonds for her hair flashing rays of green and orange
lights. Lydia liked her jewelry for the best of all reasons--she had
bought most of it herself. She particularly liked the emerald band,
which made her look like an Eastern princess in a Russian ballet, and in
her opinion exactly fitted her type. But her beauty was not so easily
classified as she thought. To describe her in words was to describe a
picture by Cabanel of The Star of the Harem--such a picture as the
galleries of the second half of the nineteenth century were sure to
contain--the oval face, the splendid dark eyes, the fine black eyebrows,
the raven hair; but Lydia's skin was not transparently white, and a
slight heightening of her cheek bones and a thrust forward of her jaw
suggested something more Indian than Eastern, something that made her
seem more at home on a mountain trail than on the edge of a marble
pool.
As she entered, Evans was brushing the last traces of powder from a