In the moment of its delivery, however, the strange lady next me had turned quickly and looked me in the face. She appeared to me an utterly colourless person, _fade_, thin, dowdy, with hardly a sign of spirit or expression--a condemned ghost of womanhood. I wondered presently at the fond attentions with which her husband treated her, at his efforts to win a smile from her unresponsive face, and his patience when habitually baffled, since he himself was a fine bold figure of a man, white-teethed, black-whiskered, for all his forty-five or so years. And I wondered still when I came to learn how persistently she had disappointed his hopes of an heir, the few children she had born to him having died one by one on the very threshold of their existence. But perhaps all those fruitless pangs were accountable as much for his manly devotion as for her insensibility. She might have held him responsible for that seed of death which had stultified all the rich Woman in her. In any case, that he was more attached to her than she to him was obvious. She spoke little--nothing to me; and, I noticed, ate little, but crumbled her bread all dinner-time. I was not concerned, inasmuch as it gave me the opportunity to observe elsewhere, which I had the inclination, and the provocation now, moreover, to do. Though the object of the old ex-governor’s misbegotten attention, and the immediate brief cynosure of all eyes, I was the only one, I think, not momentarily confounded. A curious self-possession, a sort of conceit of masterfulness, had come to claim me of late. A kind of cold and scrutinising philosophy had found me out of the old dependence. Having had long the will to counter my allotted destiny, a very little of the means had encouraged me to something like effrontery. I felt already a sense of power; a truculence in the face of the least supposed imposition on me of superiority. While, therefore, they were all looking at me, I was coolly intent on Lady Skene. One hurried glance my way she gave; and then her eyes were lowered to the cloth, as she drew off her gloves and addressed some commonplace remark to Mr Dalston, who sat on her right. Her voice, I have not yet observed, was marked by a slight Cockney intonation--hardly to be gathered from its softness--just a twang from Cheapside, like the faintest distant whine of Bow Bells. But it was enough to imply her origin. Looking away from her, my eyes travelled to Mr Pugsley beside me. He was obviously flustered and annoyed--shifted his shoulders, pinched his nose, defied, self-conscious, my stare, and failed utterly to stand up to it. Then he cleared his throat with violence, and affected, ostentatiously, to prefer the menu card to my company.