His proportions were not at all bad, and I have seen a good many very much worse looking fellows who flattered themselves that they were quite killing. His face had lost the freshness of early youth, and looked as though it spent a great deal of its time in the haunts of dissipation. The moustache, however, was perfect—so golden, so long, so elegant was it, that it must have been the envy of countless members of the masher tribe, and I was not surprised to notice presently that its owner found his pet occupation in stroking it. Just now, however, he was chiefly employed in lamenting the accident which had occurred to his nether garment, this being, by the way, one portion of a tweed suit of the most alarmingly demonstrative pattern and colour. “By Jove!” he muttered, disconsolately, “it’s awful! you know. When I was so careful, too! What on earth ever possessed me to mount that tree? Isn’t it extraordinary?” This time I was about to attempt a reply, when I was struck dumb with awe and astonishment, and my companion, who had found his own eyes sufficiently powerful to take in my appearance, hastily fixed a single eyeglass into position, and gazed in open-mouthed wonder at an apparition which approached us. And he might well gaze, for of a surety the creature which we saw was something worth looking at, and a specimen of a race the like of which we had never seen before. “It is a woman,” I thought. “A goddess!” the masher declared, and for a time I could not feel sure that he was mistaken. She was close upon seven feet in height, I am sure, and was of magnificent build. A magnified Venus, a glorified Hebe, a smiling Juno, were here all united in one perfect human being whose gait was the very poetry of motion. She wore a very peculiar dress, I thought, until I saw that science and common sense had united in forming a costume in which the requirements alike of health, comfort, and beauty had reached their acmé. A modification of the divided skirt came a little below the knee, the stockings and laced boots serving to heighten, instead of to hide, their owner’s beautiful symmetry of limb. A short skirt supplemented the graceful tunic, which was worn slightly open at the neck, and partially revealed the dainty whiteness of a shapely bust. The whole costume was of black velvet, and was set off by exquisite filmy laces, and by a crimson sash which confined the tunic at the waist, and hung gracefully on the left side of the wearer. She was wearing a silver-embroidered velvet cap, which she courteously doffed on beholding us, and I noticed that her hair, but an inch or two long, curled about her head and temples in the most delightfully picturesque fashion imaginable.