call on him! Funny way of treating a lady.
Why can't he come himself?"

But Pa and Ma thought differently: Jimmy was "somebody," a man to be
considered, right at the top of the profession; she'd have done better to
marry him and not her Trampy Wheel-Pad!...

"You must go," insisted Ma. "Don't you like going alone? Shall I come with
you?"

"Yes, that's different," said Lily, who had a certain pride and who felt
sure that Jimmy would never mention that thousand marks before a witness.

Her heart beat a little, as she went up the staircase of the Horse Shoe to
the third floor, on the left, door 32. At first, she was surprised that he
should be there, having read in _The Era_ ... but he might have moved. On
the whole, she was not sorry to show herself to Jimmy in her pretty frock,
he having seen her last in her room in Berlin, looking ill, unkempt and
frightfully ugly. She was not sorry, either, that Ma was with her:

"He's in love, I suppose," said Lily. "Everybody makes love to me: why do
they, Ma? I'm not a bit pretty, off the stage."

And she took a mischievous pleasure in enlarging upon her successes and
her flirtations, there, on the staircase of the Horse Shoe, with Ma beside
her, and no smackings, gee, nor any fear of smackings in the future! What
a change since her marriage!

"Yes," Lily went on, as she read the numbers on the doors--29--"Ma, you
ought to see the flowers I get, the chocolates, the sweets"--31--"but all
that does not prevent a lady from keeping straight"--32--

Then she gave a stifled cry, her voice stuck in her throat: Trampy, Trampy
himself stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets, a cigar in his
mouth, his hat cocked over one ear; and he looked at her with a bantering
air:

"Sorry to disappoint you, Miss Lily. You hoped to find some one else,
eh?"

Ma, utterly flabbergasted, had dropped on to a bench in the passage, in
the shadow. Trampy did not even see her. Lily was crimson with shame at
being caught tripping by Trampy: she could not deny it. She wanted to run
away, but, stupefied with surprise, remained where she stood, with dilated
pupils, open-mouthed.

"You can look at me till to-morrow morning and it won't help you," said
Trampy quietly, with the air of a man who has prepared his speech. "I've
got you this time! I sent the telegram; I knew you'd come, wherever he
thought fit to meet you; you'd have come for less than Jimmy; you'd have
come for the impersonator or any one