'I'm sure that madman is about the theatre again.' The maid obeyed with alacrity.

She was very tall and dark, and when she had entered Cordova's service two years ago she had been positively cadaverous.

She herself said that her appearance had been the result of living many years with the celebrated Madame Bonanni, who was a whirlwind, an earthquake, a phenomenon, a cosmic force.

No one who had lived with her in her stage days had ever grown fat; it was as much as a very strong constitution could do not to grow thin.
Madame Bonanni had presented the cadaverous woman to the young Primadonna as one of the most precious of her possessions, and out of sheer affection.

It was true that since the great singer had closed her long career and had retired to live in the country, in Provence, she dressed with such simplicity as made it possible for her to exist without the long-faithful, all-skilful, and iron-handed Alphonsine; and the maid, on her side, was so thoroughly a professional theatrical dresser that she must have died of inanition in what she would have called private life.