the stage, her head thrown back, her grand round arms raised above—her whole attitude as audacious as it was admirable. She had laughed at Blondette’s paint, but it seemed that she had not hesitated to avail herself of similar artifices. She looked much fairer than by daylight; but her massive neck and shoulders were plentifully powdered, while there was very strong rouge upon her cheeks. Yet the glare of gas almost necessitated this. It was one of Grimshaw’s standing orders always to turn the gas well on when the bally was played, “Mind that, now, Gassy,” he would say to his fitter, “and light ’em well up.” Mademoiselle Boisfleury’s style of dancing was of the strong school. It was graceful according to the dancer’s theory of grace, but it was never tender; she was agile enough, but never aërial, in spite of the part she played in the romantic ballet. She had none of that slenderness of limb which sometimes makes the spectators tremble lest a foot should give way or an ankle be distorted. The substantial frame of Mademoiselle Boisfleury set at rest effectually all ideas of that kind. She was as a grand flower on a thoroughly strong stalk. She was safe enough—dashing, intrepid, indefatigable, with a smile that did not look assumed, and a glance that seemed to dare the theatre to withhold its applause. Certainly she was an imposing-looking creature in her first dress of flame-coloured gauze powdered with gold stars, with her jewelled armlets and necklace (probably the stones were not precious), and some brilliant ornaments glittering amidst her jet black hair. In the last scene she wore, of course, white muslin, without decoration of any kind, her hair streaming down her back and the rouge washed from her cheeks.
“She’s a good one to dance,” said a stout gentleman, with his coat closely buttoned, sitting in the stalls, to a friend in gold spectacles.
“Well, yes, she is,” the friend answered; “her entrechats are really admirable. She is a first rate danseuse of the second rank. She would not suit us in Paris; but she does very well for you others here.”
“Has she appeared at your opera house?”
“No; there are reasons for her not appearing in Paris.”
“Indeed! Mossoo!” said the Inspector, “our sort of reasons?”
“Let us say political reasons, if you will, my friend. It is the plea many of the French urge to excuse their absence from their native country. Some governments are too paternal, and like the wise father, they do not spare their children the rod. Perhaps Mademoiselle Stephanie fears the rod. You see, my friend, I have taken of your haff-naff, but I am still of the executive. I know what I say.”
“She is a good-looking woman!” said the Inspector, bluntly. “How old do you suppose she is?”
“Ah, well, let me see; she must be as near thirty as a woman ever gets,—let us say twenty-eight. Yes, she is pretty! very charming indeed, ma chère! What is this—La Tentation, is it not? Yes, of course. She does it very well.”
“Has she been dancing all these years?”
“Sometimes she dance—sometimes she sit still: she appear and re-appear. She made her débût very young. She was then at Brussels—she was young; she could not dance very well.”
A handsome bald-headed man, sitting in front of the Inspector and his friend, turned round suddenly at this.
“Will Monsieur kindly permit me to use his opera-glass for one minute?” asked the Frenchman, in a soft voice, bowing politely.
“Immediately,” was the answer. The gentleman seemed to have caught sight of some one he knew occupying a private box on a low tier. He looked through the glass, and having apparently satisfied himself upon the subject, he handed the glass to the Frenchman.
“Yes,” said George Martin to himself, “it is he, sure enough. Wilford has come here to make certain that Mademoiselle Regine is Mademoiselle Boisfleury! Who can wonder that he should do so, poor fellow. How white he looks! how he keeps at the back of the box. It is a wonder that I saw him at all. How he must suffer! This woman his wife, and Violet! Can such things be?”
“That petite is Mademoiselle Blondette, I suppose?” the Frenchman inquired of his friend. “She is pretty, only she is affected.”
“Yes,” said the Inspector, “she used to be at the Vulture in the City Road,—a clever girl; but you should hear her father speak of her—hear the character he gives her. Most respectable man by the name of Simcox,—keeps a pie-shop up at Hoxton. Little Sally Simcox—that’s his daughter—used to dance Highland-flings and such like, at the Alexandrina Saloon near Shoreditch. Now she calls herself Blondette—cuts her family dead, and won’t hear of the name of Simcox—keeps a coach and pair. Such is life!”
“Ah, truly,” the Frenchman remarked, philosophically, “it is wonderful the fortunes that are made by ballet-dancers.”
Some one entering in great haste nearly placed a foot in the Frenchman’s glossy hat on the floor before him.
“Prenez garde, Monsieur!”
“Je vous demande pardon, Monsieur,” muttered the new-comer.
“Ah! Monsieur Alexis; it is you, then?”
“Ah! Monsieur—”
“Chose. S'il vous plait, Monsieur Chose.”
Then suddenly Monsieur Chose abandoned the tone of banter in which he had been speaking, and whispered fiercely in the ear of Monsieur Alexis: “How dare you come here, sir? Go! What do you here? go at once.”
“I go, Monsieur,” the boy said, in a scared voice, and hurried out. He was afterwards to be seen in the upper boxes of the theatre, vigorously applauding the performance, and especially the dancing of Mademoiselle Blondette.
“Who is he?” asked the Englishman.
“You don’t know him? Ah! then you soon will. Petit diable; he is a young man of considerable promise.”
“He looks a mere boy.”
“He is not far from twenty, however. He is a half-breed. If he takes care, there is a chance that he may be able to combine the dexterity of
