The Minister had surreptitiously looked at his watch, and a tiresome lady friend had said good-bye in a voice which might have been lower, and with a lament which might have been spared.  Mrs. Stuart set great store upon the success of her social undertakings, and to gather a crowd of people to meet the rising star of the season, and then to have to send them home with only tea and talk to remember, was one of those failures which no one with any self-respect should allow themselves to risk.

However, fortune was once more kind to one of her chief favourites.  Mrs. Stuart was just listening with a tired face to the well-meant, but depressing condolences of the barrister standing by her, who was describing to her the ‘absurd failure’ of a party to meet the leading actress of the Comedie Francaise, to which he had been invited in the previous season, when the sound of wheels was heard outside.  Mrs. Stuart made a quick step forward, leaving her Job’s comforter planted in the middle of his story; the hum of talk dropped in an instant, and the crowd about the door fell hastily back as it was thrown open and Miss Bretherton entered.

What a glow and radiance of beauty entered the room with her!  She came in rapidly, her graceful head thrown eagerly back, her face kindling and her hands outstretched as she caught sight of Mrs. Stuart.  There was a vigour and splendour of life about her that made all her movements large and emphatic, and yet, at the same time, nothing could exceed the delicate finish of the physical structure itself.  What was indeed characteristic in her was this combination of extraordinary perfectness of detail, with a flash, a warmth, a force of impression, such as often raises the lower kinds of beauty into excellence and picturesqueness, but is seldom found in connection with those types where the beauty is, as it were, sufficient in and by itself, and does not need anything but its own inherent harmonies of line and hue to impress itself on the beholders.

There were some, indeed, who maintained that the smallness and delicacy of her features was out of keeping with her stature and her ample gliding motions.  But here, again, the impression of delicacy was transformed half way into one of brilliancy by the large hazel eyes and the vivid whiteness of the skin.  Kendal watched her from his corner, where his conversation with two musical young ladies had been suddenly suspended by the arrival of the actress, and thought that his impression of the week before had been, if anything, below the truth.

‘She comes into the room well, too,’ he said to himself critically; ’she is not a mere milkmaid; she has some manner, some individuality.  Ah, now Fernandez’—­naming the Minister—­’has got hold of her.  Then, I suppose, Rushbrook (the member of the Government) will come next, and we commoner mortals in our turn.  What absurdities these things are!’