The witticism was received with a roar from her admirers, and satisfied with her victory, she said—­“And now, you girls, you come and have drinks with me.  What will you have, Kitty, what will you have? give it a name.”

Kitty protested but was forced to sit down.  The courtesans joined the comic vocalists, waiting to do their “turns.”  Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown ordered magnums, and soon the hall was almost deserted.  A girl was, however, dancing prettily on the stage, and Mike stood to watch her.  Her hose were black, and in limp pink silk skirts she kicked her slim legs surprisingly to and fro.  After each dance she ran into the wings, reappearing in a fresh costume, returning at length in wide sailor’s trousers of blue silk, her bosom partially covered in white cambric.  As the band played the first notes of the hornpipe, she withdrew a few hair-pins, and forthwith an abundant darkness fell to her dancing knees, almost to her tiny dancing feet, heavy as a wave, shadowy as sleeping water.  As some rich weed that the warm sea holds and swings, as some fair cloud lingers in radiant atmosphere, her hair floated, every parted tress an impalpable film of gold in the crude sunlight of the ray turned upon her; and when she danced towards the footlights, the bright softness of the threads clung almost amorously about her white wrists—­faint cobwebs hanging from white flowers were not more faint, fair, and soft; wonderful was the hair of this dancing girl, suggesting all fabled enchantments, all visions of delicate perfume and all the poetry of evanescent colour.

She was followed by the joyous Peggy Praed (sweet minx), the soul and voice of the small back streets.  Screwing up her winsome, comical face, drawling a word here, accentuating a word there, she evoked, in an illusive moment, the washing day, the quarrel with the mother-in-law (who wanted to sleep in the house), tea-time, and the trip to the sea-side with all its concomitant adventures amid bugs and landladies.  With an accent, with a gesture, she recalled in a moment a phase of life, creating pictures vivid as they were transitory, but endowing each with the charm of the best and most highly finished works of the Dutch masters.  Lords, courtesans, and fellow-artists crowded to listen, and profiting by the opportunity, Kitty touched Mike on the shoulder with her fan.

“Now we had better go.”

“I’m driving to-morrow.  Come down to Brighton with us,” said Dicky the driver.  “Shall I keep places for you?”

Rising, Kitty laid her hand upon his mouth to silence him, and whispered, “Yes; we’ll come, and good-night.”

In the soft darkness of the brougham, gently swung together, the passing gaslights revealing the blueness of the cushions, a diamond stud flashing intermittently, they lay, their souls sunk deep in the intimacy of a companionship akin to that of a nest—­they, the inheritors of the pleasure of the night and the gladness of the morrow.