At last--it was really in a
very few minutes--Mademoiselle Duroc entered the room. While she talked
with Mrs. Patterson, Anne regarded her with awe.
Like her surroundings, Mademoiselle was formal and handsome. She was of
middle height, but she carried herself with such stately grace that she
impressed Anne as being very tall. Her glossy hair, of which no one
ever saw a strand out of place, was arranged in elaborate waves and
coils supported by a tall shell comb. She wore a very long, very stiff
black silk gown trimmed with beads and lace, and she had a purple silk
shawl around her shoulders. When she moved, her skirts rustled in a
stately fashion and sent forth a stately odor of sandalwood.
"I shall have to do whatever she tells me," Anne knew at once. "If she
tells me to walk in the fire, I shall have to go."
That was the impression Mademoiselle Duroc always made on people. She
was a born general, and if she had been a man and had lived a century
earlier, she would have been one of the great Napoleon's marshals and
led a freezing, starving little band to impossible victories;--so Miss
Morris said. Miss Morris, a stout, middle-aged, New England lady, was
Mademoiselle's assistant.
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