“What color?” asked Mouse, with a glance at her own eyes in an adjacent mirror and a displeased severity on her mouth.
“Black—black as night! At least, you know, perhaps they weren’t really black; they were like that stone—what do you call it—opal? No; onyx—yes, onyx. Such a woman! I’m a bad ’un to please, but, on my honor——”
“You are very enthusiastic!” said Mouse, with the lines of her lips more scornful and displeased. “Where did you see this miracle?”
Brancepeth smiled.
“Lord, how soon they are jealous!” he thought. “Take fire like tow!”
Aloud he answered:
“Yesterday my sister got me to go to complines at the Oratory. It was some swell saint or another, and some of the cracks were singing there. This woman was close to where I was. She was all in black, and seemed very much ‘gone’ on the service; her eyes got full of tears at part of it. Well, I don’t mind telling you she fetched me so that I asked the Duc d’Arcy to see my sister safe home, and I followed the lady with the eyes. She got into a little dark coupé, and my hansom bowled after it. I ran her to earth at a private hotel—quite solemn sort of place called Brown’s—and there they told she was the Countess zu Lynar.”
“Countess zu Lynar! then one can soon see who she is,” said Mouse, as she went and got an Almanac de Gotha of the year from her writing-table.
“Oh, I looked there last night,” said Brancepeth; “she isn’t there; but the porter told me she used to be the wife of that awfully rich banker Vanderlin.”
Mouse looked up, astonished and momentarily interested.