I looked and answered quickly: “She is handsome, not beautiful.”
“I can’t see any difference between the meaning of the words,” she pouted, “but look well at her, I have something to tell you when----.”
Here the action of the play parted us, but brought me close to the box. I had needed no urging to look well at its occupant. I could scarcely take my eyes from her, there was something so strange, so odd about her. She was not young. She was most stately in air and figure. Her head was most beautifully shaped, her features regular, her chin firm and deeply cleft, and her eyes--not black, not brown--yet dark, radiantly dark. Their soft shining seeming to contradict the cold strength of her face. Her brows--ah, at last, here was the bizarre touch! Her eyebrows formed one straight line. I don’t mean that they nearly met or were thinly joined; they were thickly and darkly united, in one threatening sweep, above her glowing eyes, giving that hint of tragedy to her face that so surely accompanies united brows on either man or woman.
Once her eyes caught mine and calmly held them fast, and in that moment, as a child may flash a blinding ray of sunlight from a mirror into your face, there flashed into my mind these words: “Only a qualified admiration, eh? And you feel something, eh? You don’t know what? No! and you won’t know either, my dear!” and I ended the act with cheeks as hot from wounded feeling as though the words had actually been spoken to me.
I was not in the second act, neither was the “young society woman,” or at least she was on the stage for about three minutes, after which she came, swelling visibly with importance, for in very truth she had something to reveal, and first exacting, on word of honor, promise not to tell (I only do it now, when: “In Paris suddenly----”). She quickly began: “You can see she is a lady, can’t you? Born in Boston--perfectly lovely family--old--very old, you know! Was splendidly educated, and the very day of her _début_ in society--I don’t know who brought her out, her mother was dead, you know--that very day her father killed himself! Ruined--no courage and all that--she had no near relatives! Went off alone--went abroad--worked at teaching or companioning or something! Things then went wrong--troubles came, awful troubles! Oh--oh!” The speaker’s eyes looked fairly scared, her hands trembled, she drew close to me, and holding fast a fold of my dress, she with desperate haste flung out these words: “She--that American woman--that lady sitting there--she has been accused of murder! Why, she has stood trial for her life!”