er than Consols, and the
firm making a fool of itself.

I drove her for another week after this, chiefly to the theatre with
the Honorary John, and to supper afterwards. She had a wonderful mania
for shopping, and used to spend hours in Regent Street, while I read
the _Auto-Car_ outside, and fell to asking myself how long it would
last. You don't deceive the man who drives the car--be sure of it.
Either she led the Honorary John to the financial altar, or her poor
uncle would be on the Rocky Mountains--I hadn't a doubt of it.

I liked her, that goes without saying. A man's a fool who tells you
that a pretty woman's charm is less because her bankers are wondering
how they shall get the cheque-book back, and the tradesman round the
corner is blotting his ledger with tears. In a way I was in love with
Miss Dolly, and would have married her myself upon any provocation; but
before I could make up my mind to it either way, she'd gone like a
flash, and half the bill collectors in London after her. This I
learned during the week following the disappearance. She sent for me
one day to pick her up at Joran's Hotel, and when I got there, and the
hotel porter had handed out two rugs and a Pomeranian, down comes the
chambermaid to say madam had not returned since eleven o'clock. And
then I knew by some good instinct that the game was up--and, handing
the Pomeranian back, I said, "Be good to him, for he's an orphan."

This was a surmise--a surmise and nothing more; and yet how true it
proved! I had a 'tec with me on the following afternoon, and a pretty
tale he had to tell. Not, mind you, as he himself declared, that Dolly
was really dishonest. She had left a few bills behind her; but where
is the woman who does not do that, and who would think the better of
her if she didn't? Dolly wasn't a thief by a long way--but her
shopping mania was wild enough to be written about, and she bought
thousands of pounds' worth of goods in London, just for the mere
pleasure of ordering them and nothing more.

I often laugh when I think how she fooled the tradesmen in Bond Street
and the West End. Just imagine them bowing and scraping when she told
'em to send home a thousand-pound tiara, or a two-hundred-guinea white
fox, and promised they should be paid on delivery. Why, they strewed
her path with bows and smiles--and when they sent home the goods to a
flat by Regent's Park--an address she always gave--they found it empty
and no on