erative, save for her soon making the reflexion that they were
people whom in any country, from China to Peru, you would immediately
have taken for natives. One of them was an old lady with a shawl; that
was the most salient way in which she presented herself. The shawl was
an ancient much-used fabric of embroidered cashmere, such as many ladies
wore forty years ago in their walks abroad and such as no lady wears
to-day. It had fallen half off the back of the wearer, but at the moment
Biddy permitted herself to consider her she gave it a violent jerk and
brought it up to her shoulders again, where she continued to arrange and
settle it, with a good deal of jauntiness and elegance, while she
listened to the talk of the gentleman. Biddy guessed that this little
transaction took place very frequently, and was not unaware of its
giving the old lady a droll, factitious, faded appearance, as if she
were singularly out of step with the age. The other person was very much
younger--she might have been a daughter--and had a pale face, a low
forehead, and thick dark hair. What she chiefly had, however, Biddy
rapidly discovered, was a pair of largely-gazing eyes. Our young friend
was helped to the discovery by the accident of their resting at this
moment for a time--it struck Biddy as very long--on her own. Both these
ladies were clad in light, thin, scant gowns, giving an impression of
flowered figures and odd transparencies, and in low shoes which showed a
great deal of stocking and were ornamented with large rosettes. Biddy's
slightly agitated perception travelled directly to their shoes: they
suggested to her vaguely that the wearers were dancers--connected
possibly with the old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the
time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had
perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came on with an
offered hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy chance--he was
uncommonly glad to see him.

"I never come across you--I don't know why," Nick added while the two,
smiling, looked each other up and down like men reunited after a long
interval.

"Oh it seems to me there's reason enough: our paths in life are so
different." Nick's friend had a great deal of manner, as was evinced by
his fashion of saluting Biddy without knowing her.

"Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we both live in
London, after all, and in the nineteenth century?"

"Ah my dear D