“Miss Ward is on the stage; but I will give it to her when she comes off in four minutes,” said the stage-door-keeper.
Accordingly I waited near his room.
The allotted time went by—it is known in a theatre exactly how long each scene will take—and at the expiration of the four minutes Miss Ward’s dresser came to bid me follow her up to the lady’s room. The dresser was a nice, complacent-looking woman, l’âge ordinaire, as the French would say, arrayed in a black dress and big white apron.
Miss Ward had ascended before us, and was already seated on her little sofa.
“Delighted to see you, my dear,” she exclaimed. “I have three-quarters of an hour’s wait, so I hope you will stay to cheer me up.”
How lovely she looked. Her own white hair was covered by a still whiter front wig, while added colour had given youth to her face, and the darkened eyelids made those wondrous grey orbs of hers even more striking.
“Why, you look about thirty-five,” I exclaimed, “and a veritable grande dame!”
“It is all the wimple,” she said.
“And what may that be?”