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Red Masquerade by Louis Joseph Vance
page 73 of 287 (25%)

She gazed in the direction of the windows as a matter of habit, because
Mama Thérèse objected to her reading at the desk (all the same, sometimes
she did it on the sly) because the glimpses she caught, above the
half-curtains, of heads of passersby gave her idle imagination something to
play with, but mostly because it was difficult otherwise to seem
unconscious of the stares that converged toward her from every table
occupied by a masculine patron, whether regular or casual--unless the
patron happened to be accompanied by a lady, in which unhappy event he had
to content himself with furtive, sidelong glances, not always furtive
enough by half.

The feminine patrons stared, too, but from quite another angle of view.

Sofia knew why. If she hadn't, the mirror across the room would have
enlightened even a woman without vanity; which paradox this thoroughly
human young person was not.

She was, indeed, healthily vain; and when she wasn't focussing dream-dark
eyes upon the windows, or verifying additions and making change, she was as
likely as not to be stealing consultations with the mirror opposite, making
sure she hadn't, in the last few minutes, gone off in her looks. Not that
her comeliness bade fair ever to prove the cause of any real excitement.
Mama Thérèse made a first-rate dragon: she was very much on the job of
discouraging enterprising young men, and this without respect for union
hours or overtime. And when she wasn't functioning as the ubiquitous
wet-blanket, Papa Dupont understudied for her, and did it most efficiently,
too. If anything he was more vigilant and enthusiastic when it came to
administering the snub sufficient than even Mama Thérèse; in Sofia's sight,
indeed, he betrayed some personal feeling in the business; he seemed to
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