knew you spoke of her as old. A box of sardines is 'old' only after it
has been opened, Lady Beldonald never has yet been--but I'm going to do
it." I joked, but I was somewhat disappointed. It was a type that, with
his unerring sense for the _banal_, I shouldn't have expected Outreau to
pick out.

"You're going to paint her? But, my dear man, she is painted--and as
neither you nor I can do it. _Ou est-elle donc_? He had lost her, and I
saw I had made a mistake. She's the greatest of all the great Holbeins."

I was relieved. "Ah then not Lady Beldonald! But do I possess a Holbein
of _any_ price unawares?"

"There she is--there she is! Dear, dear, dear, what a head!" And I saw
whom he meant--and what: a small old lady in a black dress and a black
bonnet, both relieved with a little white, who had evidently just
changed, her place to reach a corner from which more of the room and of
the scene was presented to her. She appeared unnoticed and unknown, and
I immediately recognised that some other guest must have brought her and,
for want of opportunity, had as yet to call my attention to her. But two
things, simultaneously with this and with each other, struck me with
force; one of them the truth of Outreau's description of her, the other
the fact that the person bringing her could only have been Lady
Beldonald. She _was_ a Holbein--of the first water; yet she was also
Mrs. Brash, the imported "foil," the indispensable "accent," the
successor to the dreary Miss Dadd! By the time I had put these things
together--Outreau's "American" having helped me--I was in just such full
possession of her face as I had found myself, on the other first
occasion, of that of her patroness. Only with so different a
consequence. I couldn't look at her enough, and I stared and stared till