ng to a troupe, of living in the gaslight, which pervaded even
the details of her dress, fashioned evidently with an attempt at the
histrionic. If she had produced a pair of castanets or a tambourine, he
felt that such accessories would have been quite in keeping.

Little Doctor Prance, with her hard good sense, had noted that she was
anaemic, and had intimated that she was a deceiver. The value of her
performance was yet to be proved, but she was certainly very pale, white
as women are who have that shade of red hair; they look as if their
blood had gone into it. There was, however, something rich in the
fairness of this young lady; she was strong and supple, there was colour
in her lips and eyes, and her tresses, gathered into a complicated coil,
seemed to glow with the brightness of her nature. She had curious,
radiant, liquid eyes (their smile was a sort of reflexion, like the
glisten of a gem), and though she was not tall, she appeared to spring
up, and carried her head as if it reached rather high. Ransom would have
thought she looked like an Oriental, if it were not that Orientals are
dark; and if she had only had a goat she would have resembled Esmeralda,
though he had but a vague recollection of who Esmeralda had been. She
wore a light-brown dress, of a shape that struck him as fantastic, a
yellow petticoat, and a large crimson sash fastened at the side; while
round her neck, and falling low upon her flat young chest, she had a
double chain of amber beads. It must be added that, in spite of her
melodramatic appearance, there was no symptom that her performance,
whatever it was, would be of a melodramatic character. She was very
quiet now, at least (she had folded her big fan), and her father
continued the mysterious process of calming her down. Ransom wondered
whether he wouldn't put her to sleep; for some minutes her eyes had
remained closed; he heard a lady near him, apparently familiar with
phenomena of this class, remark that she was going off. As yet the
exhibition was not exciting, though it was certainly pleasant to have
such a pretty girl placed there before one, like a moving statue. Doctor
Tarrant looked at no one as he stroked and soothed his daughter; his
eyes wandered round the cornice of the room, and he grinned upward, as
if at an imaginary gallery. "Quietly--quietly," he murmured from time to
time. "It will come, my good child, it will come. Just let it work--just
let it gather. The spirit, you k