"Wasn't I sharp?" returned the Prophet. "Will you present me?"
"Are you equal to it, my love?" inquired Malkiel, tenderly, to the
contralto voice.
The contralto voice nodded hysterically.
"Madame Sagittarius, sir," said Malkiel, turning proudly to the Prophet,
"my wife, the mother of Corona and Capricornus."
The Prophet bowed and the lady inclined herself, slightly protruding her
elbows as she did so, as if just to draw attention to the fact that she
was possessed of those appendages and could use them if necessary.
Madame Malkiel, or rather Madame Sagittarius, as she must for the
present be called, was a smallish woman of some forty winters. Her hair,
which was drawn away intellectually from an ample and decidedly convex
brow, was as black as a patent leather boot, and had a gloss upon it as
of carefully-adjusted varnish. Her eyes were very large, very dark and
very prominent. Her features were obstreperous and rippling, running
from right to left, and her teeth, which were shaded by a tiny black
moustache, gleamed in a manner that could scarcely be called natural.
She was attired in a black velvet gown trimmed with a very large
quantity of beadwork, a bonnet adorned with purple cherries, green
tulips and orange-coloured ostrich tips, a pelisse, to which bugles had
been applied with no uncertain hand, and an opal necklace.
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