Meanwhile, at the name of Dunstable, the girl accountant in the distance had also moved sharply, so as to look at the young man.  But in the bustle of Madame Vavasour’s entrance, and her passage to the sitter’s chair, the girl’s gesture passed unnoticed.

“I’m just worn out, Maestro!” said the model languidly, uplifting a pair of tragic eyes to the artist.  “I sat up half the night writing.  I had a subject which tormented me.  But I have done something splendid!  Isn’t it splendid, Herbert?”

“Ripping!” said the young man, grinning widely.

“Sit down!” said Madame, with a change of tone.  And the youth sat down, on the very low chair to which she pointed him, doing his best to dispose of his long legs.

“Give me the dog!” she commanded.  “You have no idea how to hold him—­poor lamb!”

The dog was handed to her; she took off her enormous hat with many sighs of fatigue, and then, with the dog on her lap, asked how she was to sit.  Bentley explained that he wished to make a few preliminary sketches of her head and bust, and proceeded to pose her.  She accepted his directions with a curious pettishness, as though they annoyed her; and presently complained loudly that the chair was uncomfortable, and the pose irksome.  He handled her, however, with a good-humoured mixture of flattery and persuasion, and at last, stepping back, surveyed the result—­well content.

There was no doubt whatever that she was a very handsome woman, and that her physical type—­that of the more lethargic and heavily built Neapolitan—­suggested very happily the mad and melancholy Queen.  She had superb black hair, eyes profoundly dark, a low and beautiful brow, lips classically fine, a powerful head and neck, and a complexion which, but for the treatment given it, would have been of a clear and beautiful olive.  She wore a draggled dress of cream-coloured muslin, very transparent over the shoulders, somewhat scandalously wanting at the throat and breast, and very frayed and dirty round the skirt.  Her feet, which were large and plump, were cased in extremely pointed shoes with large paste buckles; and as she crossed them on the stool provided for them she showed a considerable amount of rather clumsy ankle.  The hands too were large, common, and ill-kept, and the wrists laden with bracelets.  She was adorned indeed with a great deal of jewellery, including some startling earrings of a bright green stone.  The hat, which she had carefully placed on a chair beside her, was truly a monstrosity!—­but, as Doris guessed, an expensive monstrosity, such as the Rue de la Paix provides, at anything from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty francs, for those of its cosmopolitan customers whom it pillages and despises.  How did the lady afford it?  The rest of her dress suggested a struggle with small means, waged by one who was greedy for effect, obtained at a minimum of trouble.  That she was rouged and powdered goes without saying.