"May I come in?"
An ordinary remark, truly, to stick in one's head for thirty-odd years!
But it was made in such a _very_ pretty voice--one of the most silvery
voices I have ever heard from any woman except the late Queen Victoria,
whose voice was like a silver stream flowing over golden stones.
The smart little figure--Mrs. Bancroft was, above all things,
_petite_--dressed in black--elegant Parisian black--came into a room
which had been almost completely stripped of furniture. The floor was
covered with Japanese matting, and at one end was a cast of the Venus
of Milo, almost the same colossal size as the original.
Mrs. Bancroft's wonderful gray eyes, examined it curiously. The room,
the statue, and I myself must all have seemed very strange to her. I
wore a dress of some deep yellow woolen material which my little
daughter used to call the "frog dress," because it was speckled with
brown like a frog's skin. It was cut like a Viollet-le-Duc tabard, and
had not a trace of the fashion of the time. Mrs. Bancroft, however, did
not look at me less kindly because I wore aesthetic clothes and was
painfully thin. She explained that they were going to put on "The
Merchant of Venice" at the Prince of Wales's, that she was to rest for a
while for reasons connected with her health; that she and Mr.
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