She was sitting in a gracefully majestic attitude by the side of a small table on which a desk was placed. Mrs. Siddons never unbent for a moment in private life.
She assumed majestic attitudes in the presence of the lodging-house servant, and spoke in a tragic contralto to the linen-draper's apprentice. She turned her lovely eyes upon Dionysius Hogan as he stood smirking and bowing at the door. There was a vista of tragedy in the delivery of the two words—
“Well, sir?”
It took him some moments to recover from the effect the words produced upon him. He cleared his throat—it was somewhat husky—and with an artificial smirk he piped out:
“Madam—ah, my charmer, I have rushed to clasp my goddess to my bosom! Ah, fair creature, who could resist your appeal?”
He advanced in the mincing gait of the Macaronis. She sprang to her feet. She pointed an eloquent forefinger at a spot on the floor directly in front of him.
“Wretch,” she cried, “advance a step at your peril!” Her eyes were flashing, and her lips were apart.
His mincing ceased abruptly; and only the ghost of a smirk remained upon his patched and painted face. It was in a very fluty falsetto that he said:
“Ah, I see my charmer wants to be wooed. But why should Amanda reproach her Strephon for but obeying her behests? Wherefore so coy, dear nymph? Let these loving arms—”