ders' it!"

He looked now and again at Madame Carre and saw she had in her lap an
open book, apparently a French prose version, brought by her visitors,
of the play; but she never either glanced at him or at the volume: she
only sat screwing into the girl her hard, bright eyes, polished by
experience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines of
the other speakers was attentive in another degree; he followed Miriam,
in his own copy, to keep sure of the cue; but he was elated and
expressive, was evidently even surprised; he coloured and smiled, and
when he extended his hand to assist Constance to rise, after the
performer, acting out her text, had seated herself grandly on "the huge
firm earth," he bowed over her as obsequiously as if she had been his
veritable sovereign. He was a good-looking young man, tall,
well-proportioned, straight-featured and fair, of whom manifestly the
first thing to be said on any occasion was that he had remarkably the
stamp of a gentleman. He earned this appearance, which proved inveterate
and importunate, to a point that was almost a denial of its spirit: so
prompt the question of whether it could be in good taste to wear any
character, even that particular one, so much on one's sleeve. It was
literally on his sleeve that this young man partly wore his own; for it
resided considerably in his garments, and in especial in a certain
close-fitting dark blue frock-coat, a miracle of a fit, which moulded
his juvenility just enough and not too much, and constituted, as
Sherringham was destined to perceive later, his perpetual uniform or
badge. It was not till afterwards that Peter began to feel exasperated
by Basil Dashwood's "type"--the young stranger was of course Basil
Dashwood--and even by his blue frock-coat, the recurrent, unvarying,
imperturbable good form of his aspect. This unprofessional air ended by
striking the observer as the very profession he had adopted, and was
indeed, so far as had as yet been indicated, his mimetic capital, his
main qualification for the stage.

The ample and powerful manner in which Miriam handled her scene produced
its full impression, the art with which she surmounted its difficulties,
the liberality with which she met its great demand upon the voice, and
the variety of expression that she threw into a torrent of objurgation.
It was a real composition, studded with passages that called a
suppressed tribute to the lips and seeming to show that a