What was the lady like, he inquired.
Gregory painted. Hair like silken floss, small mouth, underlip very full
and pink, upper lip pink but very thin and curled; there were four white
spots on the nail of her right hand forefinger, and her eyebrows were very
delicately curved.
"Yes; and a rose-bud tinge in the cheeks; hands like lilies, and perfectly
seraphic smile."
"That is she! that is she!" cried Gregory.
Who else could it be? He asked where she had gone to. The gentleman most
thoughtfully stroked his beard.
He would try to remember. Were not her ears--. Here such a violent fit of
coughing seized him that he ran away into the house. An ill-fed clerk and
a dirty barman standing in the doorway laughed aloud. Gregory wondered if
they could be laughing at the gentleman's cough, and then he heard some one
laughing in the room into which the gentleman had gone. He must follow him
and try to learn more; but he soon found that there was nothing more to be
learnt there. Poor Gregory!
Backward and forward, backward and forward, from the dirty little hotel
where he had dropped the thread, to this farm and to that, rode Gregory,
till his heart was sick and tired. That from that spot the wagon might
have gone its own way and the spider another was an idea that did not occur
to him. At last he saw it was no use lingering in that neighbourhood, and
pressed on.
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