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 adding one to its skirt, they clouded again
with doubt, as though prepared to fly from the decision she had come to.
Resuming her bodice, she asked:

"When could you let me have it?"