ptacle against every breath
of air. How shouldn't she be preserved when you might smash your
knuckles on this transparency before you could crack it? And she is--oh
amazingly! Preservation is scarce the word for the rare condition of her
surface. She looks _naturally_ new, as if she took out every night her
large lovely varnished eyes and put them in water. The thing was to
paint her, I perceived, in the glass case--a most tempting attaching
feat; render to the full the shining interposing plate and the general
show-window effect.

It was agreed, though it wasn't quite arranged, that she should sit to
me. If it wasn't quite arranged this was because, as I was made to
understand from an early stage, the conditions from our start must be
such as should exclude all elements of disturbance, such, in a word, as
she herself should judge absolutely favourable. And it seemed that these
conditions were easily imperilled. Suddenly, for instance, at a moment
when I was expecting her to meet an appointment--the first--that I had
proposed, I received a hurried visit from Mrs. Munden, who came on her
behalf to let me know that the season happened just not to be propitious
and that our friend couldn't be quite sure, to the hour, when it would
again become so. She felt nothing would make it so but a total absence of
worry.

"Oh a 'total absence,'" I said, "is a large order! We live in a worrying
world."

"Yes; and she feels exactly that--more than you'd think. It's in fact
just why she mustn't have, as she has now, a particular distress on at
the very moment. She wants of course to look her best, and such things
tell on her appearance."

I shook my head. "Nothing tells on her appearance. Nothing reaches it
in any way; nothing gets _at_ it. However, I can understand her anxiety.
But what's her particular distress?"

"Why the illness of Miss Dadd."

"And who in the world's Miss Dadd?"

"Her most intimate friend and constant companion--the lady who was with
us here that first day."

"Oh the little round black woman who gurgled with admiration?"

"None other. But she was taken ill last week, and it may very well be
that she'll gurgle no more. She was very bad yesterday and is no better
to-day, and Nina's much upset. If anything happens to Miss Dadd she'll
have to get another, and, though she has had two or three before, that
won't be so easy."

"Two or three Miss Dadds? is it possible? And still wanting anoth