The Woman with the Fan by Robert Hichens — Read

WHEN the last guest had grimaced at her and left the drawing-room, Lady / Holme stood with her hand on the mantelpiece, facing a tall mirror. She / was alone for the moment. Her husband had accompanied Mrs. Wolfstein / downstairs, and Lady Holme could hear his big, booming voice below, / interrupted now and then by her impudent soprano. She spoke English with / a slight foreign accent which men generally liked and women loathed. / Lady Holme loathed it. But she was not fond of her own sex. She believed / that all women were untrustworthy. She often said that she had never met / a woman who was not a liar, and when she said it she had no doubt / that, for once, a woman was speaking the truth. Now, as she heard Mrs. / Wolfstein's curiously improper laugh, she frowned. The face in the / mirror changed and looked almost old.

This struck her unpleasantly. She kept the frown in its place and stared / from under it, examining her features closely, fancying herself really / an old woman, her whimsical fascination dead in its decaying home, her / powers faded if not fled for ever. She might do what she liked then. / It would all be of no use. Even the voice would be cracked and thin, / unresponsive, unwieldy. The will would be phlegmatic. If it were not, / the limbs and features would not easily obey its messages. The figure, / now beautiful, would perhaps be marred by the ungracious thickness, the / piteous fleshiness that Time often adds assiduously to ageing bodies, as / if with an ironic pretence of generously giving in one direction / while taking away in another. Decay would be setting in, life becoming / perpetual loss. The precious years would be gone irrevocably.