Farther back rose tier upon tier of seats sacred to the wives and daughters of the ministry, and St.George even looked hopelessly and mechanically among these for the face that he sought.
To some seats slightly elevated, not far from the dais, his attention was at length challenged by an upheaving and billowing of purple and black.

He looked, and in the same instant what seemed to have been a kind of storm centre resolved itself cloudily into Mrs.
Medora Hastings, breathlessly resuming her seat, while Mr.Augustus Frothingham, in indescribably gorgeous apparel elaborately bent to receive--and a member of the High Council bent to hand--two glittering articles which St.George was certain were side-combs.
There the lady sat, tilting her head to keep her tortoise-shell glasses on her nose, perpetually curving their chain over her ear, a gesture by which the side-combs were perpetually displaced.

If the island people had been painted purple, St.George felt sure that she would have acted quite the same.

Personality meant nothing to her--not, as with them, because it had been merged in something greater, but because, with her, it was overborne by self.

And there sat Mr.Frothingham (who did not attend the play during court because he believed that a man of affairs should not unduly stimulate the imagination), his head thrown back so that his long hair rested on his amazing collar, his hands laid trimly along his knees.