hrouded with its tissue her
half-decided little features, her rather too high cheek-bones, her cheeks
which were slightly hollowed, as though Time had kissed them just too
much.

The old man, with a long face, eyes rimmed like a parrot's, and
discoloured nose, who, so long as he did not sit down, was permitted to
frequent the pavement just there and sell the 'Westminster Gazette',
marked her, and took his empty pipe out of his mouth.

It was his business to know all the passers-by, and his pleasure too; his
mind was thus distracted from the condition of his feet. He knew this
particular lady with the delicate face, and found her puzzling; she
sometimes bought the paper which Fate condemned him, against his
politics, to sell. The Tory journals were undoubtedly those which her
class of person ought to purchase. He knew a lady when he saw one. In
fact, before Life threw him into the streets, by giving him a disease in
curing which his savings had disappeared, he had been a butler, and for
the gentry had a respect as incurable as was his distrust of "all that
class of people" who bought their things at "these 'ere large
establishments," and attended "these 'ere subscription dances at the Town
'All over there." He watched her with special interest, not, indeed,
attempting to attract attention, though conscious in every fibre that he
had only sold five copies of his early issues. And he was sorry and
surprised when she passed from his sight through one of the hundred
doors.

The thought which spurred her into Messrs. Rose and Thorn's was this: "I
am thirty-eight; I have a daughter of seventeen. I cannot afford to lose
my husband's admiration. The time is on me when I really must make
myself look nice!"

Before a long mirror, in whose bright pool there yearly bathed hundreds
of women's bodies, divested of skirts and bodices, whose unruffled
surface reflected daily a dozen women's souls divested of everything, her
eyes became as bright as steel; but having ascertained the need of taking
two inches off the chest of the gentian frock, one off its waist, three
off its hips, and of adding one to its skirt, they clouded again with
doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to.
Resuming her bodice, she asked:

"When could you let me have it?"

"At the end of the week, madam."

"Not till then?"

"We are very pressed, madam."

"Oh, but you must let me have it by Thursday at the latest, please."