es, and I told him that as
I was very anxious not to be worried about them at the last minute, they
had been got on with early and were now finished.

"Finished! That's very interesting! Very interesting. And what--er--what
colors are they?"

"In the first scene I wear a pinkish dress. It's all rose-colored with
her. Her father and brother love her. The Prince loves her--and so she
wears pink."

"Pink," repeated Henry thoughtfully.

"In the nunnery scene I have a pale, gold, amber dress--the most
beautiful color. The material is a church brocade. It will 'tone down'
the color of my hair. In the last scene I wear a transparent, black
dress."

Henry did not wag an eyelid.

"I see. In mourning for her father."

"No, not exactly that. I think _red_ was the mourning color of the
period. But black seems to me _right_--like the character, like the
situation."

"Would you put the dresses on?" said Henry gravely.

At that minute Walter Lacy came up, that very Walter Lacy who had been
with Charles Kean when I was a child, and who now acted as adviser to
Henry Irving in his Shakespearean productions.

"Ah, here's Lacy. Would you mind, Miss Terry, telling Mr. Lacy what you
are going to wear?"

Rather surprised, but still unsuspecting, I told Lacy all over again.
Pink in the first scene, yellow in the second, black--

You should have seen Lacy's face at the word "black." He was going to
burst out, but Henry stopped him. He was more diplomatic than that!

"They generally wear _white_, don't they?"

"I believe so," I answered, "but black is more interesting."

"I should have thought you would look much better in white."

"Oh, no!" I said.

And then they dropped the subject for that day. It _was_ clever of him!

The next day Lacy came up to me:

"You didn't really mean that you are going to wear black in the mad
scene?"

"Yes, I did. Why not?"

"_Why not!_ My God! Madam, there must be only one black figure in this
play, and that's Hamlet!"

I did feel a fool. What a blundering donkey I had been not to see it
before! I was very thrifty in those days, and the thought of having been
the cause of needless expense worried me. So instead of the _crepe de
Chine_ and miniver, which had been used for the black dress, I had for
the white dress Bolton sheeting and rabbit, and I believe it looked
better.

The incident, whether Henry was right or not, led me to see that,
although I knew more of art and archaeology in