rt of its desirability.

"And suppose Stephen doesn't like me in it!" This doubt set her gloved
fingers pleating the bosom of her frock. Into that little pleat she
folded the essence of herself, the wish to have and the fear of having,
the wish to be and the fear of being, and her veil, falling from the
edge of her hat, three inches from her face, shrouded 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