n, and it was furnished in a gimcrack way, with more show than
real value, and with more color than taste. Every room was of a
different hue, with furniture and hangings to match. The drawing-room
was pink, the dining-room green, her bedroom blue, the entrance hall
yellow, and the extra sleeping apartment used by her companion, Miss
Stably, was draped in purple. Some wit called the flat "the paint-box,"
and indeed so varied were its hues that it was not a bad title to give
it.

Like the Becky Sharp whom she impersonated with such success, Miss Qian
possessed a sheep-dog, not because she needed one, being very well able
to look after herself, but because it sounded and looked respectable.
Miss Stably, who filled this necessary office, was a dull old lady who
dressed excessively badly, and devoted her life to knitting shawls. What
she did with these when completed no one ever knew: but she was always
to be found with two large wooden pins rapidly weaving the fabric for
some unknown back. She talked very little, and when she did speak, it
was to agree with her sharp little mistress. To make up for speaking
little, she ate a great deal, and after dinner with her eternal knitting
in her bony hands and a novel on her lap, was entirely happy. She was
one of those neutral-tinted people, who seem not good enough for heaven
and not sufficiently bad for the other place. Aurora often wondered what
would become of Miss Stably when she departed this life, and left her
knitting behind her. The old lady herself never gave the matter a
thought, but lived a respectable life of knitting and eating and novel
reading, with a regular visit to church on Sunday where she worshipped
without much idea of what the service was about.

This sort of person exactly suited Miss Qian, who wanted a sheep-dog who
could neither bark nor bite, and who could be silent. These
qualifications were possessed by the old lady, and for some years she
had trailed through a rather giddy world at Aurora's heels. In her own
dull way she was fond of the young woman, but was far from suspecting
that Aurora was connected in an underhand manner with the law. That
knowledge would indeed have shaken Miss Stably to the soul, as she had a
holy dread of the law, and always avoided the police-court column when
she read the newspapers.

This was the old lady who sat in the pink drawing-room to play propriety
for Miss Qian. Lord George Sandal was present, looking rather washed