me quick perception of dangers to be avoided and difficulties to
be overcome which had warned her to leave the extravagant part of her
character costume in the box at Birmingham now kept her mind fully alive
to the vast difference between a disguise worn by gas-light for the
amusement of an audience and a disguise assumed by daylight to deceive
the searching eyes of two strangers. The first article of dress which
she put on was an old gown of her own (made of the material called
"alpaca"), of a dark-brown color, with a neat pattern of little
star-shaped spots in white. A double flounce running round the bottom
of this dress was the only milliner's ornament which it presented--an
ornament not at all out of character with the costume appropriated to an
elderly lady. The disguise of her head and face was the next object of
her attention. She fitted and arranged the gray wig with the dexterity
which constant practice had given her; fixed the false eyebrows (made
rather large, and of hair darker than the wig) carefully in their
position with the gum she had with her for the purpose, and stained her
face with the customary stage materials, so as to change the transparent
fairness of her complexion to the dull, faintly opaque color of a woman
in ill health. The lines and markings of age followed next; and here
the first obstacles presented themselves. The art which succeeded by
gas-light failed by day: the difficulty of hiding the plainly artificial
nature of the marks was almost insuperable. She turned to her trunk;
took from it two veils; and putting on her old-fashioned bonnet, tried
the effect of them in succession. One of the veils (of black lace)
was too thick to be worn over the face at that summer season without
exciting remark. The other, of plain net, allowed her features to
be seen through it, just indistinctly enough to permit the safe
introduction of certain lines (many fewer than she was accustomed to
use in performing the character) on the forehead and at the sides of
the mouth. But the obstacle thus set aside only opened the way to a
new difficulty--the difficulty of keeping her veil down while she was
speaking to other persons, without any obvious reason for doing so. An
instant's consideration, and a chance look at her little china palette
of stage colors, suggested to her ready invention the production of a
visible excuse for wearing her veil. She deliberately disfigured herself
by artificially reddening the i