slipping any of the spoons off the table
inside her camisole. You never know what's going to go next with these
kleptomaniacs. Er--hur!"

She gave a little exaggerated cough. "I'll have to keep my own eye on
the other jewel thief, Nellie Million--d'you know her?"

Here I saw my aunt's cold, grey eye seeming to go straight through the
face and form of the girl who used to be her maid-of-all-work.

Miss Million, in her rather crushed but very "good"-looking pink linen
gown, held her small head high and glared back defiantly at the woman
who used to take her to task for having failed to keep a wet clean
handkerchief over the butter-dish. She (my mistress) seemed to gain
confidence and poise as soon as she stood near the large, grey-clad
figure of her American cousin.

All through this the voice of Miss Vi Vassity rippled on. "I'd better
introduce the gentleman. This is Mr. Hiram P. Jessop, the inventor. I
don't mean 'liar.' One o' those is enough in a party, eh, Jim? This is
the Honourable Mr. James Burke, of Ballyneck Castle. This is Mr. Brace.
Now we're all here; come along----"

"Thank you very much, but I think I will say 'Good morning,'" broke in
my aunt's most destructively polite tones. "Come, Beatrice. I am taking
my niece with me."

Here there occurred that of which I am sure Miss Million has often
dreamed, both when she was a little, twenty-pound-a-year
maid-of-all-work and lately, since she's been the heiress of a fortune.

She struck!

She, once dependent upon every order from those thin, aristocratic lips
of Miss Anastasia Lovelace's, gave her own order to her own ex-mistress.

"Very sorry, Miss Lovelace, but I can't spare your niece to go with you
just now," she announced, in her "that-settles-it" sounding Cockney
accent. "I want her to change me for luncheon.

"Friday is her afternoon out," enlarged Miss Million, encouraging
herself with an upward glance into the grave, boyish, American face of
her cousin, and speaking more authoritatively still. "I can't have her
gallivanting off to you nor to any one else just this minute. It's not
convenient. She's my maid now, you see----"

My aunt's glance was that of a basilisk, her tone like the cut of a
whip, as she retorted coldly: "My niece has nothing more to do with you.
She will leave you at once. She is no longer in your--your grotesque
service."

"My service is as good as yours was, and a fat lot better, I can tell
you, Miss Lovelace," riposted