and have seen her, finally equipped,
descending to the salon to join Miss Comstock, who was usually engaged
with her correspondence at this hour.

Adelle, it is perhaps needless to say, had quickly perceived the
enlarged opportunity for the use of her magic lamp. She at once ordered
a very comfortable limousine, which was driven by an experienced
chauffeur, and thus transported herself, Miss Comstock, and any of the
girls she chose to invite to the exhibition at the Georges Petit
Gallery, thence to a concert, or perhaps merely to tea at the new hotel
in the Champs Elysees. If any reader has perhaps considered Adelle
backward or stupid, he must quickly revise that opinion at this point.
For it was truly extraordinary the rapidity with which the pale, passive
young heiress caught the pace of Paris. The note of the world about her
was the spending note, and the drafts she made through her French
bankers upon the Washington Trust Company caused a certain uneasiness
even among those sophisticated officials, used to the expenditures of
the rich.

Of course, Miss Comstock introduced her charges to the best dressmakers
and dispensers of lingerie and millinery (for which service she obtained
free of charge all her own clothes). Adelle soon found her own way into
the shops of the Rue de la Paix and developed a genuine passion--the
first one of her life--for precious stones. It may be remembered that
when she was taken as a little girl for the first time into the new home
of the trust company, she had been much impressed by the gorgeousness of
colored marble and glass there profusely used. For a long time the great
banking-room with its dim violet light had remained in her memory as a
source of sensuous delight, and as her opportunities had increased she
had turned instinctively to things of color and warmth, especially in
stones and fabrics. In those public and private exhibitions to which she
was constantly conducted as part of her education in art she hung over
the cases that contained specimens of new designs in metal and stone.
Miss Comstock, perceiving her interest in these toys, encouraged Adelle
to try her own hand at the manufacture of jewelry, and engaged a needy
woman worker to give her the necessary lessons in the lapidary art.
Adelle had acquired considerable sloth from her desultory way of living;
nevertheless, when the chance was forced into her hands, she took to the
new work with ardor and produced some bungling