st of masts. The boat stopped at a
landing-place to a little garden, with a sanded path, between herbs
and flowers. "This is Mistress Darke's," said Loveday, and as a little
dwarfish lad came to the gate, she said, "We would speak with your
mistress."

"On your own part?'

"From the great lady in Hanover Square."

The lad came down to assist in their landing, and took them up the
path to a little cupboard of a room, scented with a compound of every
imaginable perfume. Bottles of every sort of essence, pomade, and
cosmetic were ranged on shelves, or within glass doors, interspersed
with masks, boxes for patches, bunches of false hair, powder puffs,
curling-irons, and rare feathers. An alembic [a device used in
distillation--D.L.] was in the fireplace, and pen and ink, in a
strangely-shaped standish, were on the table. Altogether there was
something uncanny about the look and air of the room which made Aurelia
tremble, especially as she perceived that Loveday was both frightened
and distressed.

The mistress of the establishment speedily appeared. She had been a
splendid Jewish beauty, and still in middle age, had great owl-like
eyes, and a complexion that did her credit to her arts; but there was
something indescribably repulsive in her fawning, deferential curtsey,
as she said, in a flattering tone, with a slightly foreign accent, "The
pretty lady is come, as our noble dame promised, to explain to the
poor Cora Darke the great queen's secret! Ah! how good it is to have
learning. What would not my clients give for such a skin as hers! And
I have many more, and greater than you would think, come to poor Cora's
cottage. There was a countess here but yesterday to ask how to blanch
the complexion of miladi her daughter, who is about to wed a young
baronet, beautiful as Love. Bah! I might as well try to whiten a clove
gillyflower! Yet what has not nature done for this lovely miss?"

"Shall I read you the paper?" said Aurelia, longing to end this part of
the affair.

"Be seated, fair and gracious lady."

Aurelia tried to wave aside a chair, but Mrs. Darke, on the plea of
looking over the words as she read, got her down upon a low couch,
putting her own stout person and hooked face in unpleasant proximity,
while she asked questions, and Aurelia mentioned her own conjectures on
the obsolete French of the recipe, while she perceived, to her alarm,
that the woman understood the technical terms much better than she did,
a