Then there entered a--person, to use the safe yet not very respectful word which Mr. J. S. Mill rescued from the hands of flunkeys and policemen--a female figure, to speak more romantically, clad in elegant black silken robes, very well made, with dark hair elaborately dressed; tall, slight, graceful, one of those beings to be met with everywhere in the inner recesses of great shops like Tottenham’s, bearing all the outward aspect of ladies, moving about all day long upon rich carpets, in a warm luxurious atmosphere, “trying on” one beautiful garment after another, and surveying themselves in great mirrors as they pass and repass. The best of feminine society ebbs and flows around these soft-voiced and elegant creatures--duchesses, princesses, who look like washerwomen beside them, and young girls often not more pretty or graceful. They are the Helots of the female fashionable world, and, at the same time, to some degree, its despots; for does not many a dumpy woman appear ridiculous in the elegant garb which was proved before her eyes so beautiful and becoming upon the slim straight form of the “young person” who exhibited and sold if? Miss Lockwood entered, with her head well up, in one of the attitudes which are considered most elegant in those pretty coloured pictures of the “Modes,” which, to her class of young ladies, are as the Louvre and the National Gallery thrown into one. She was no longer, except from a professional point of view, to be considered absolutely as a “young lady.” Her face, which was a handsome face, was slightly worn, and her age must have been a year or two over thirty; but, as her accuser admitted, and as her defender asserted, a more “ladylike-looking” person, or a better figure for showing off shawl or mantle had never been seen in Tottenham’s or any other house of business. This was her great quality. She came in with a little sweep and rustle of her long black silken train; her dress, like her figure, was her stock-in-trade. “Oh, I beg your pardon,” she said in an abrupt yet airy tone, angry yet sensible withal of those personal advantages which made it something of a joke that anyone should presume to find fault with her. “I hear my character is being taken away behind my back, and I have come, please, to defend myself.” Edgar looked at this kind of being, which was new to him, with a mixture of feelings. She had the dress and appearance of a lady, and she was unquestionably a woman, though she would have scorned so common a name. He rose from his seat when she came in with the intention of getting a chair for her, as he would have done to any other lady, but was deterred, he could scarcely tell why, by her own air and that of the other two men who looked at her without budging. “Sit down, sit down,” said Mr. Tottenham hastily, aside to him, “of course I know what you mean, but that sort of thing does not do. It makes them uncomfortable; sit down; she will give us trouble enough, you will see.”