On the chair from which the model had risen she had deposited yet another hat, so large, so audacious and beplumed that it seemed to have a positive personality, a positive swagger of its own, and to be winking roguishly at the audience.
Meanwhile Madame's muslin dress of the day before had been exchanged for something more appropriate to the warmth of her poetry--a tawdry flame-coloured satin, in which her "too, too solid" frame was tightly sheathed.

Her coal-black hair, tragically wild, looked as though no comb had been near it for a month, and the gloves drawn half-way up the bare arms hardly remembered they had ever been white.
A slovenly, dishevelled, vulgar woman, reciting bombastic nonsense! And yet!--a touch of Southern magnificence, even of Southern grace, amid the cockney squalor and finery.

Doris coolly recognised it, as she stood, herself invisible, behind her uncle's large easel.

Thence she perceived also the other persons in the studio:--Bentley sitting in front of the poetess, hiding his eyes with one hand, and nervously tapping the arm of his chair with the other; to the right of him--seen sideways--the lanky form, flushed face, and open mouth of young Dunstable; and in the far distance, Miss Wigram.
Then--a surprising thing! The awkward pause following the recitation was suddenly broken by a loud and uncontrollable laugh.

Doris, startled, turned to look at young Dunstable.