er's boiling and we'll have tea in a minute.'

The lady undid the fastening at her throat so that the fur-lined cloak
opened and slipped a little on her white shoulders. She held it in
place with one hand, and with the other she carefully turned back the
lace hood from her face, so as not to disarrange her hair. Mr. Van
Torp was making tea, and he looked up at her over the teapot.

'I dressed for dinner,' she said, explaining.

'Well,' said Mr. Van Torp, looking at her, 'I should think you did!'

There was real admiration in his tone, though it was distinctly
reluctant.

'I thought it would save half an hour and give us more time together,'
said the lady simply.

She sat down in the shabby easy-chair, and as she did so the cloak
slipped and lay about her waist, and she gathered one side of it over
her knees. Her gown was of black velvet, without so much as a bit of
lace, except at the sleeves, and the only ornament she wore was a
short string of very perfect pearls clasped round her handsome young
throat.

She was handsome, to say the least. If tired ghosts of departed
barristers were haunting the dingy room in Hare Court that night, they
must have blinked and quivered for sheer pleasure at what they saw,
for Mr. Van Torp's visitor was a very fine creature to look at; and if
ghosts can hear, they heard that her voice was sweet and low, like an
evening breeze and flowing water in a garden, even in the Garden of
Eden.

She was handsome, and she was young; and above all she had the
freshness, the uncontaminated bloom, the subdued brilliancy of
nature's most perfect growing things. It was in the deep clear eyes,
in the satin sheen of her bare shoulders under the sordid gaslight; it
was in the strong smooth lips, delicately shaded from salmon colour to
the faintest peach-blossom; it was in the firm oval of her face, in
the well-modelled ear, the straight throat and the curving neck; it
was in her graceful attitude; it was everywhere. 'No doubt,' the
ghosts might have said, 'there are more beautiful women in England
than this one, but surely there is none more like a thoroughbred and a
Derby winner!'

'You take sugar, don't you?' asked Mr. Van Torp, having got the lid
off the old tobacco-tin with some difficulty, for it had developed an
inclination to rust since it had last been moved.

'One lump, please,' said the thoroughbred, looking at the fire.

'I thought I remembered,' observed the millionaire. 'The tea's