The lights were down and all eyes were focused on Cinderella, one of the prettiest and daintiest little actresses in London, dressed in pink and sitting before a very realistic make-belief of a kitchen fire, when Miss Dawkins, who had her elbows resting on the balustrade and was leaning well forward, heard a faint ejaculation from close beside her. Fearing lest her mother was ill, she turned sharply round, and was somewhat surprised to see that Mrs. Dawkins had left her seat and was leaning against the wall of the box with her arms folded and a most satirical smile on her face. Both the attitude and the expression were so entirely novel that Miss Dawkins could only conclude that her mother had suddenly taken leave of her senses; and she was deliberating what to do, when a feeling that a sudden metamorphosis was about to take place held her spellbound. Bit by bit her mother seemed to fade away, to melt into the background; the dim outline and the general posture remained, but instead of the actual body and well-known face, she saw something else gradually begin to form and to usurp their place. Her mother had very delicate and beautifully shaped hands, but these vanished, and the hands Miss Dawkins now looked on were large and red and coarse--horribly coarse. Fearful of what she might see next, but totally unable to fight against some strange, controlling agency, she continued to look. First, her eyes rested on a pair of sleeves--white, baggy, and soiled; then on a broad, deep chest, also clad in white and decorated in the most fantastic manner conceivable in the centre; then on a short, immensely thick neck; and then on the face. The shock she now received was acute. Instinct had prepared her for something very startling, but for nothing quite so grotesque, nor so wholly at variance with the general atmosphere of the theatre. It was the painted, crinkled face of a clown--not a merry, jesting grimaldi, but a clown of a different type--a clown without a smile--a clown born and fully trained to his business in Hell. As he stood there glaring at the footlights, every feature, every atom of his person breathed out hate--hate of a nature so noxious and intense that it seemed to Miss Dawkins as if the very air were poisoned by it. Being a devout Catholic, she at once crossed herself and, although almost powerless with horror, began to pray. The face then faded till it entirely disappeared, and Miss Dawkins once again found herself gazing upon the well-known countenance of her mother. "Why are you standing?" she asked.