gan McMurray.

"Yes," I snapped.

"Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic wretch
has gone to his club," said his wife, "and I'll take her out shopping."

"But, dear lady," I cried in despair, "she has but one garment--and that
a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that belonged to a dancer of
the second Empire! She is also barefoot."

"Then I'll come round myself and see what can be done."

"And by Jove, so will I!" cried McMurray.

"You'll do such thing," said his wife

"If I gave you a cheque for 100," said I, "do you think you could get
her what she wants, to go on with?"

"A hundred pounds!" The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and I
thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his sledgehammer of a
hand down on my shoulder.

"Man!" he roared. "Do you know what you are doing--casting a respectable
wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a
hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think she will henceforward give a
thought to her home or husband? Do you want to ruin my domestic peace,
drive me to drink, and wreck my household?"

"If you do that again," said I, rubbing my shoulder, "I'll give her two
hundred."

When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa,
smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and
turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary taste surprised
me. But I soon found it was the second volume of my _edition de luxe_ of
Louandre's _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to whose place on the shelves sheer
feminine instinct must have guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray's
proposed visit. She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and
sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple
of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I picked
it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.

"Carlotta," said I, "the first thing you have to learn here is that
books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta. If you
pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have
you hanged."

This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for reflection,
and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of
clothes.

"In fact," I concluded, "you will be dressed like a lady." She opened
the book at a gaudy picture, "_France, XVI(ieme) Siecle--Saltimbanque et
Bohemmienne_," and pointed to the female mounteba