The colour flew like a flag to the head milliner’s cheek and fire to her eye. Then she abruptly turned her back upon the questioner, and the youngest assistant, who happened to be taking a hat out of a drawer, was surprised to see that she was struggling with a violent inclination to laugh. “Ho!” The ejaculation leaped with a world of horror from Polly’s lips. Her superior wheeled back upon her. “Yes, Miss Popple, I was sitting in a garden, and very pleasant it was among the roses; and I had a child upon my lap, the dearest, sweetest little creature that ever breathed, a perfect cherub! A girl, if you want to know, Miss Popple, and though dark, like to be a beauty.” The young ladies tittered, though there were looks interchanged, too. And Pamela’s tone, tripped up with subterranean mirth, sounded to some of them rather hysterical. Polly, after a dumb show of wounded female delicacy, expressively rendered, tottered from the room as if her legs could scarce carry so much horrified rectitude; and the incident apparently dropped. Indeed, Pamela regarded it merely as another of Popple’s nasty bits of spleen. A low-minded, common creature! As if her girls would be taken in by such vile suggestions! As if the life of Pamela Pounce, head milliner, was not as fresh and fair as her own face! An episode which Pamela could not but consider as curious in the circumstances presently occurred and drove the very existence of Popple from her mind. A carriage drew up to the door, early as it was--ten o’clock had not yet struck--and a customer entered, a short, dark young woman of a marked type of Spanish beauty, who walked with a bold cadence of the hips that set her maize silk panniers swinging, and a carriage of the head that you might call like that of a fawn, or of a serpent, as your feelings towards her prompted. Pamela advanced in her most engaging manner. “What can I do for you, madam?” She broke off. “Merciful heavens!” something within her cried. “I should know that face.” The newcomer fixed her with beautiful, insolent eyes. There was a gleam of rubies in each delicate ear, and at the dusky round throat a red fire that came and went from a monstrous clasp of the same stones, half-hidden by laces. “If you will show me a hat, all black, with black feathers,” began the lady. She had a slow voice, rich like cream, and an odd guttural aspiration of the consonants. “Something with the Spanish air.” In her turn, she stopped short. The milliner had fallen back a pace, and was looking at her with horror. “I think,” said Pamela, very low but very distinctly, “that you have entered this establishment by mistake.” The foreign lady wheeled upon her. There was no doubt about it, with all her beauty she was viperish. “Fool, my name is the Countess Sanquhar!” “And a very fit name for you, too!” responded Pamela. Upon which extraordinary observation she herself opened the door and stood until the visitor passed out.