‘The lady. I won’t attempt to describe her; for after all what can one say of the loveliest woman except that she has a straight nose, fine eyes, a good complexion? And yet these constitute so small a part of Beauty. One may see them in the street every day. This one stood there like a statue in the cold wintry light, and seemed to me the most perfect being I had ever beheld. She appeared divinely unconscious of her beauty, as unconscious as Aphrodite must have been in that wild free world of newborn Greece, though all creation worshipped her. She didn’t look about her with a complacent smile, challenging admiration. Her dark-fringed eyelids drooped over the violet-gray eyes, as she looked downward at the music. Her dress was Quaker-like, a linen collar round the full firm throat, the perfect arm defined by the plain black sleeve. Art had done nothing to enhance or to detract from her beauty. She sang “Auld Robin Gray” in a voice that went to my inmost heart. The musical nobility sniffed and murmured rapturously. The old gentleman rapped his snuffbox, and said Bwava! and the song was re-demanded. She curtsied and began something about a blue bodice and Lubin, and in this there were bird-like trills, and a prolonged shake, clear and strong as the carol of a sky-lark. Lucius, I was such a demented ass at that moment, that if the restraints of civilisation hadn’t been uncommonly strong upon me, I should have wept like a schoolboy before a caning.’ ‘Something in the _timbre_ of the voice,’ said Lucius, ‘simpatica.’ ‘Sim-anybody you like; it knocked me over as if I’d been a skittle.’ ‘Have you seen her since?’ ‘Have I seen her! I have followed her from concert-room to concert-room, until my _sensorium_—that’s the word, isn’t it?—aches from the amount of classical music that has been inflicted upon it—the x minors and z majors, and so forth. Sometimes I hunted her down in some other aristocratic drawing-room, by the kind permission, &c.; sometimes I found her at the Hanover-square Rooms. Mitchell has a standing order to send me a ticket for every concert at which she sings. It’s deuced hard work. I’m due this time to-morrow at St. George’s Hall, Liverpool.’ ‘But, my dear old Geoff, can anything be more foolish?’ expostulated Lucius, forgetful of that rusty old gate in the Shadrack-road, to which purest pity had so often led him. ‘I daresay not. But I can’t help myself.’ ‘Do you know anything about the lady?’ ‘All that a diligent process of private inquiry could discover; and yet very little. The lady is a widow—’ ‘Disenchanting fact.’ ‘Her name, Bertram.’ ‘Assumed, no doubt.’ ‘Very possibly. She has lodgings in Keppel-street, Russell-square, and lives a life of extreme seclusion with one little girl. I saw the child one morning, a seraph of seven or eight, with flowing flaxen hair, blue frock, and scarlet legs, like a tropical bird, or a picture by Millais.’ ‘That sounds like respectability.’