her could only have been Lady Beldonald.  She was a Holbein—­of the first water; yet she was also Mrs. Brash, the imported “foil,” the indispensable “accent,” the successor to the dreary Miss Dadd!  By the time I had put these things together—­Outreau’s “American” having helped me—­I was in just such full possession of her face as I had found myself, on the other first occasion, of that of her patroness.  Only with so different a consequence.  I couldn’t look at her enough, and I stared and stared till I became aware she might have fancied me challenging her as a person unpresented.  “All the same,” Outreau went on, equally held, “c’est une tete a faire.  If I were only staying long enough for a crack at her!  But I tell you what”—­and he seized my arm—­“bring her over!”

“Over?”

“To Paris.  She’d have a succes fou.”

“Ah thanks, my dear fellow,” I was now quite in a position to say; “she’s the handsomest thing in London, and”—­for what I might do with her was already before me with intensity—­“I propose to keep her to myself.”  It was before me with intensity, in the light of Mrs. Brash’s distant perfection of a little white old face, in which every wrinkle was the touch of a master; but something else, I suddenly felt, was not less so, for Lady Beldonald, in the other quarter, and though she couldn’t have made out the subject of our notice, continued to fix us, and her eyes had the challenge of those of the woman of consequence who has missed something.  A moment later I was close to her, apologising first for not having been more on the spot at her arrival, but saying in the next breath uncontrollably:  “Why my dear lady, it’s a Holbein!”

“A Holbein?  What?”

“Why the wonderful sharp old face so extraordinarily, consummately drawn—­in the frame of black velvet.  That of Mrs. Brash, I mean—­isn’t it her name?—­your companion.”

This was the beginning of a most odd matter—­the essence of my anecdote; and I think the very first note of the oddity must have sounded for me in the tone in which her ladyship spoke after giving me a silent look.  It seemed to come to me out of a distance immeasurably removed from Holbein.  “Mrs. Brash isn’t my ‘companion’ in the sense you appear to mean.  She’s my rather near relation and a very dear old friend.  I love her—­and you must know her.”

“Know her?  Rather!  Why to see her is to want on the spot to ‘go’ for her.  She also must sit for me,”

“She?  Louisa Brash?” If Lady Beldonald had the theory that her beauty directly showed it when things weren’t well with her, this impression, which the fixed sweetness of her serenity had hitherto struck me by no means as justifying, gave me now my first glimpse of its grounds.  It was as if I had never before seen her face invaded by anything I should have called an expression.  This expression moreover was of the faintest—­was like the effect produced on a surface by an agitation both deep within and as yet much confused.  “Have you told her so?” she then quickly asked, as if to soften the sound of her surprise.