repassing close to his little table was painful to him. He was preparing
to rise and go out when he noticed that two white muslin dresses and
crimson sashes had not yet left the platform. One of these dresses
concealed the raw-boned frame of the woman with the bad-tempered curve
to her nostrils. She was no less a personage than Mrs. Zangiacomo. She
had left the piano, and, with her back to the hall, was preparing the
parts for the second half of the concert, with a brusque, impatient
action of her ugly elbow. This task done, she turned, and, perceiving
the other white muslin dress motionless on a chair in the second row,
she strode towards it between the music-stands with an aggressive and
masterful gait. On the lap of that dress there lay, unclasped and idle,
a pair of small hands, not very white, attached to well-formed arms.
The next detail Heyst was led to observe was the arrangement of the
hair--two thick, brown tresses rolled round an attractively shaped head.

"A girl, by Jove!" he exclaimed mentally.

It was evident that she was a girl. It was evident in the outline of the
shoulders, in the slender white bust springing up, barred slantwise by
the crimson sash, from the bell-shaped spread of muslin skirt hiding the
chair on which she sat averted a little from the body of the hall. Her
feet, in low white shoes, were crossed prettily.

She had captured Heyst's awakened faculty of observation; he had
the sensation of a new experience. That was because his faculty of
observation had never before been captured by any feminine creature in
that marked and exclusive fashion. He looked at her anxiously, as no man
ever looks at another man; and he positively forgot where he was. He had
lost touch with his surroundings. The big woman, advancing, concealed
the girl from his sight for a moment. She bent over the seated youthful