thought she expended upon them, and
she was artistic in this as in other things. Dressed in a crocus-yellow
gown, with short sleeves to reveal her beautiful arms, and cut low to
display her splendid bust, she looked perfectly dressed. A woman would
have declared the wide-netted black lace with which the dress was draped
to be cheap, and would have hinted that the widow wore too many jewels
in her hair, on her corsage, round her arms, and ridiculously gaudy
rings on her fingers. This might have been true, for Mrs. Jasher
sparkled like the Milky Way at every movement; but the gleam of gold
and the flash of gems seemed to suit her opulent beauty. Her slightest
movement wafted around her a strange Chinese perfume, which she
obtained--so she said--from a friend of her late husband's who was in
the British Embassy at Pekin. No one possessed this especial perfume but
Mrs. Jasher, and anyone who had previously met her, meeting her in the
darkness, could have guessed at her identity. With a smile to show
her white teeth, with her golden-hued dress and glittering jewels, the
pretty widow glowed in that glimmering room like a tropical bird.

The Professor raised his dreamy eyes and laid the beetle on one side,
when his brain fully grasped that this charming vision was waiting to
be entertained. She was better to look upon even than the beloved
scarabeus, and he advanced to shake hands as though she had just entered
the room. Mrs. Jasher--knowing his ways--rose to extend her hand, and
the two small, stout figures looked absurdly like a pair of chubby
Dresden ornaments which had stepped from the mantelshelf.

"Dear lady, I am glad to see you. You have--you have"--the Professor
reflected, and then came back with a rush to the present century--"you
have come to dinner, if I mistake not."

"Lucy asked me a week ago," she replied tartly, for no woman likes to be
neglected for a mere beetle, however ancient.

"Then you will certainly get a good dinner," said Braddock, waving his
plump white hands. "Lucy is an excellent housekeeper. I have no fault
to find with her--no fault at all. But she is obstinate--oh, very
obstinate, as her mother was. Do you know, dear lady, that in a papyrus
scroll which I lately acquired I found the recipe for a genuine Egyptian
dish, which Amenemha--the last Pharaoh of the eleventh dynasty, you
know--might have eaten, and probably did eat. I desired Lucy to serve it
to-night, but she refused, much to my ann