," laughed Sylvia.

"But you are beautiful," I continued, becoming quite impassioned.

"Yes, and as good as I'm beautiful."

And she was too, though perhaps the beauty occasionally predominated.

When the serious business of dining was dispatched, and we were
trifling with our coffee and liqueurs, my eyes, which of course had
seldom left her during the whole meal, once more enfolded her little
ivory and black silk body with an embrace as real as though they had
been straining passionate arms; and as I thus nursed her in my eyes, I
smiled involuntarily at a thought which not unnaturally occurred to me.

"What is that sly smile about?" she asked. Now I had smiled to think
that underneath that stately silk, around that tight little waist, was
a dainty waistband bearing the legend "Sylvia Joy," No. 4, perhaps, or
5, but NOT No. 6; and a whole wonderful underworld of lace and linen
and silk stockings, the counterpart of which wonders, my clairvoyant
fancy laughed to think, were at the moment--so entirely unsuspected of
their original owner--my delicious possessions.

Everything a woman wears or touches immediately incarnates something of
herself. A handkerchief, a glove, a flower,--with a breath she endues
them with immortal souls. How much, therefore, of herself must inhere
in a garment so confidential as a petticoat, or so close and constant a
companion as a stocking!

Now that I knew Sylvia Joy, I realised how absolutely true my instinct
had been, when on that far afternoon in that Surrey garden I had said,
"With such a petticoat and such a name, Sylvia herself cannot be
otherwise than charming."

Indeed, now I could see that the petticoat was nothing short of a
portrait of her, and that any one learned in the physiognomy of clothes
would have been able to pick Sylvia out of a thousand by that spirited,
spoilt, and petted garment.

"What is that sly smile about?" she repeated presently.

"I only chanced to think of an absurd little fairy story I read the
other day," I said, "which is quite irrelevant at the moment. You know
the idle way things come and go through one's head."

"I don't believe you," she replied, "but tell me the story. I love
fairy tales."

"Certainly," I said, for I wasn't likely to get a better opportunity.
"There's nothing much in it; it's merely a variation of Cinderella's
slipper. Well, once upon a time there was an eccentric young prince
who'd had his fling in his day, but had arr