“You mean then to speak to her—?”

I wondered as she pulled up again.  “Of her beauty?”

“Her beauty!” cried Lady Beldonald so loud that two or three persons looked round.

“Ah with every precaution of respect!” I declared in a much lower tone.  But her back was by this time turned to me, and in the movement, as it were, one of the strangest little dramas I’ve ever known was well launched.

CHAPTER III

It was a drama of small smothered intensely private things, and I knew of but one other person in the secret; yet that person and I found it exquisitely susceptible of notation, followed it with an interest the mutual communication of which did much for our enjoyment, and were present with emotion at its touching catastrophe.  The small case—­for so small a case—­had made a great stride even before my little party separated, and in fact within the next ten minutes.

In that space of time two things had happened one of which was that I made the acquaintance of Mrs. Brash; and the other that Mrs. Munden reached me, cleaving the crowd, with one of her usual pieces of news.  What she had to impart was that, on her having just before asked Nina if the conditions of our sitting had been arranged with me, Nina had replied, with something like perversity, that she didn’t propose to arrange them, that the whole affair was “off” again and that she preferred not to be further beset for the present.  The question for Mrs. Munden was naturally what had happened and whether I understood.  Oh I understood perfectly, and what I at first most understood was that even when I had brought in the name of Mrs. Brash intelligence wasn’t yet in Mrs. Munden.  She was quite as surprised as Lady Beldonald had been on hearing of the esteem in which I held Mrs. Brash’s appearance.  She was stupefied at learning that I had just in my ardour proposed to its proprietress to sit to me.  Only she came round promptly—­which Lady Beldonald really never did.  Mrs. Munden was in fact wonderful; for when I had given her quickly “Why she’s a Holbein, you know, absolutely,” she took it up, after a first fine vacancy, with an immediate abysmal “Oh is she?” that, as a piece of social gymnastics, did her the greatest honour; and she was in fact the first in London to spread the tidings.  For a face—­about it was magnificent.  But she was also the first, I must add, to see what would really happen—­though this she put before me only a week or two later.  “It will kill her, my dear—­that’s what it will do!”