Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/196

 the direction of her eyes Hyacinth saw that the chair his mysterious acquaintance had quitted in the stage-box was now occupied by a lady hitherto invisible—not the one who had given them a glimpse of her shoulder and bare arm. This was an ancient personage, muffled in a voluminous, crumpled white shawl—a stout, odd, foreign-looking woman, whose head apparently was surmounted with a light-coloured wig. She had a placid, patient air and a round, wrinkled face, in which, however, a small, bright eye moved quickly enough. Her rather soiled white gloves were too large for her, and round her head, horizontally arranged, as if to keep her wig in its place, she wore a narrow band of tinsel, decorated, in the middle of the forehead, by a jewel which the rest of her appearance would lead the spectator to suppose false. 'Is the old woman his mother? Where did she dig up her clothes? They look as if she had hired them for the evening. Does she come to your wonderful club, too? I daresay she cuts it fine, don't she?' Millicent went on; and when Hyacinth suggested, sportively, that the old lady might be, not the gentleman's mother, but his wife or his 'fancy,' she declared that in that case, if he should come to see them, she wasn't afraid. No wonder he wanted to get out of that box! The woman in the wig was sitting there on purpose to look at them, but she couldn't say she was particularly honoured by the notice of such an old guy. Hyacinth pretended that he liked her appearance and thought her very handsome; he offered to bet another paper of peppermints that if they could find out she would be some tremendous old dowager, some one with a handle to her name. To this Millicent replied, with an air of experience, that she had