“Takes hold of you, Dolly? Oh, for shame!”
“I—I d-d-d-don’t mean with his hands, my lady, b-b-but with his great dark eyes, miss, and—and he fixes you like; and once you’re like I am you’re always seeing them, and they’re looking right into you, and it makes you—you—you feel as if you must go where he tells you to, and—and I can’t help it, and I’m a wretched, unhappy girl.”
“You are indeed,” said Maude with spirit. “It is degrading in the extreme. An organ-grinder—pah!”
“It—it—it don’t matter what he is, my lady,” sobbed Dolly. “It’s the man does it. And—and some day wh-wh-when you feel as I do, miss, you’ll—”
“Silence,” cried Lady Maude. “I’ll hear no more such nonsense. Get up, you foolish girl, and go on brushing my hair. You shall think no more of that wretched creature.”
Just at that moment, after a dead silence, an air from Trovatore rang out from the pavement below, and Dolly, who had picked up the brush, dropped it again, and stood gazing toward the window with so comical an expression of grief and despair upon her face that her mistress rose, and taking her arm gave her a sharp shake.
“You silly girl!” she cried.
“But—but he’s so handsome, my lady, I—I can’t help it. Do—do please send him away.”
“Why, the girl’s fascinated,” thought Maude, whose cheeks were flushed, and whose heart was increasing its speed as she eagerly twisted up her hair and confined it behind by a spring band.
“If—if you could send him away, my lady.”