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Updated: May 10, 2025
My mother was half-reclining in an American rocking-chair, and shading her face from the fire with a hand-screen; Madame Bernard, who sat opposite to her, was holding her muff with one hand and gesticulating with the other; M. Termonde, in walking-dress, was standing with his back to the chimney, smoking a cigar, and warming the sole of one of his boots.
"It's a cross-grained sort of fortune that seems to control us in this world, Mollie," he said, at length. Mollie stared at the poor little daub on her hand-screen and met his philosophy indifferently enough. "You ought n't to say so," she answered. "And I don't know anything about it." He laughed quite savagely for so amiable a young man. "I!" he repeated.
The Duchesse shaded her eyes from the fire with a hand-screen, and it came between us, and I could not see her face, but her voice changed. "I was greatly surprised to find the girl in your flat one day. I had not understood with whom she was working.
My Lady carelessly and scornfully abstracts her attention. Sir Leicester in a great chair looks at the file and appears to have a stately liking for the legal repetitions and prolixities as ranging among the national bulwarks. It happens that the fire is hot where my Lady sits and that the hand-screen is more beautiful than useful, being priceless but small.
There was a constraint, a forced calmness in Irene's voice that did not escape her father's notice. "I hope he is not sick," said Mr. Delancy. "Oh no." Irene spoke with a sudden earnestness; then, with failing tones, added "He should have been here to-day." She sat down near the open grate, shading her face with a hand-screen, and remained silent and abstracted for some time.
It was even cheering. For it did not rain, nor was rain likely to fall for many days to come. Elfride had turned from the table towards the fire and was idly elevating a hand-screen before her face, when she heard the click of a little gate outside. 'Ah, here's the postman! she said, as a shuffling, active man came through an opening in the shrubbery and across the lawn.
Its warm red light softly illumined her whole face and figure, for in her abstraction she had let the hand-screen fall, and was stroking mechanically the little sleek head that nestled against her. Meantime I stared attentively at her, thinking I might do so without offence, seeing she had forgotten me and all else around her.
Tulkinghorn replies, making one of his quiet bows to my Lady, who is on a sofa near the fire, shading her face with a hand-screen. "It would be useless to ask," says my Lady with the dreariness of the place in Lincolnshire still upon her, "whether anything has been done." "Nothing that YOU would call anything has been done to-day," replies Mr. Tulkinghorn. "Nor ever will be," says my Lady.
Give me the mirror, will you? I want to look at myself. He made some excuse, but I saw through it and insisted, and at last he handed me one of the discs of polished silver set in a wooden frame like a hand-screen, which serve as looking-glasses in Zu-Vendis. I looked and put it down.
He looked at her, for the first time since she had entered the house. A twinkling light showed itself furtively in his dreary gray eyes: he took a dusty old hand-screen from the sideboard, and made her a present of it! "There," he said with his dry humour, "don't spoil your complexion before the kitchen fire."
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