A tall, gaunt woman of about forty-five whose striding gait caused a hooped and pleated skirt of green silk, surmounted by a bustle, to sway like a lime-tree in a breeze, wore a bodice open in front, with short sleeves, the fag end of some other fashion, but the long draggled-tailed feather boa belonged to the eighties, as did the Marie Stuart bonnet. Her blackened eyebrows and a thickly painted face attracted Dick's attention from afar, and when she approached nearer he was struck by the dark, brilliant, restless eyes. 'A strange and exalted being,' he said to himself. 'An authoress perhaps,' for he noticed that she carried some papers in her hand; 'or a poet,' he added; and prompted by his instinct he began to see in her somebody that might be turned to account, and before long he was thinking how he might introduce himself to her. 'She's forgotten her parasol; I might borrow one for her from the girl at the bar,' and the project seeming good to him he rose, and with a specially large movement of the arm lifted his hat from his head. 'You will excuse me, I hope, madam, addressing you, and if I do so it is because I am in an official capacity here, but may I offer you a parasol?' 'It's very kind of you,' she replied with a smile that lighted up her large mouth, dispersing its ugliness. 'She's got a fine set of teeth,' Dick said to himself, and he answered that he would borrow a parasol for her in the theatre. 'It's very kind of you,' she returned, smiling largely and becomingly upon him. 'It's true I forgot to bring a parasol with me, and the sun is very fierce at this time. It will be kind of you,' and much gratified that his proposal had been so graciously received, he hobbled away in the direction of the theatre, to return a few moments after with the bar girl's parasol, which he had borrowed and which he opened and handed to the lady. 'Might I ask,' she said, 'if you're one of the directors of the theatre?' 'No,' he answered, 'I'm an actor.' 'An actor in this theatre,' she replied. 'But they only sing trivial songs and dance in this theatre, and you look to me like one of Shakespeare's imaginations. Henry the Eighth, almost any one of the Henries. King John.' 'Not Romeo,' Dick interposed. 'Perhaps not Romeo. Romeo was but sixteen or seventeen, eighteen at the most. But when you were eighteen....' 'Yes,' Dick answered, 'I was thin enough then.' 'But you must not disparage yourself. Heroes are not always thin. Hamlet was fat and scant of breath. I can see you as Hamlet, whereas to cast you for Falstaff would be too obvious.' 'I've played Falstaff,' Dick replied, 'but I never could do much with the part, and I never saw anyone who could. The lines are very often too high-falutin for the character, and they don't seem to come out, no matter who plays it; the critics look on it as the best acting part, but in truth it is the worst.' 'Macduff would fit you, no; Lear,' the lady cried.