When, later on, she saw her guest dressed for dinner, the girl realized
even more vividly the genius of the artist who had planned the picture.
For the Countess de Santiago wore a clinging gown made in Greek fashion,
of a supple white material shot with interwoven silver threads. She wore
her copper-red hair in a classic knot with a wreath of emerald laurel
leaves.
She would gleam like a moonlit statue in her lily-perfumed, purple
shrine, Annesley thought, and was not surprised that the lady should
achieve an instant success with the county folk who had begged for an
invitation to meet her.
The Countess de Santiago did not seem to mind answering questions
about her powers, which everyone asked across the dinner-table. She
said that since her seventh birthday she had been able, under certain
circumstances, to see hidden things in people's lives, and future events.
Her first experience, as a child, was being shut up in a darkened room,
and looking into a mirror, where figures and scenes appeared, like waking
dreams. She had been frightened, and screamed to be let out. Her mother
had taken pity and released her, saying that after all it was what "might
be expected from the seventh child of a seventh child, born on All
Saints' Eve.
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