writer. You don't know how this
affects a woman, or you wouldn't do it. However, I shall be so glad to
meet you now, as you suggest. Suppose we go to Maskelyne and Cook's
together to-morrow afternoon (Saturday). You know it isn't the Egyptian
Hall any more. It is in St. George's Hall, I think. But you will see it
in the _Telegraph_; also the time. I will be there when the doors open.
You will recognize me from my photograph; but I shall wear red roses in
my hat. So _au revoir_ for the present. Yours sincerely, Alice Challice.
P.S.--There are always a lot of dark parts at Maskelyne and Cook's. I
must ask you to behave as a gentleman should. Excuse me. I merely
mention it in case.--A. C."

Infamous Leek! Here was at any rate one explanation of a mysterious
little typewriter which the valet had always carried, but which Priam
had left at Selwood Terrace.

Priam glanced at the photograph in the pocket-book; and also, strange to
say, at the _Telegraph_.

A lady with three children burst into the drawing-room, and instantly
occupied the whole of it; the children cried "Mathaw!" "Mathah!"
"Mathaw!" in shrill tones of varied joy. As one of the gentlewomen
passed near him, he asked modestly--

"How much, please?"

She dropped a flake of paper on to his table without arresting her
course, and said warningly:

"You pay at the desk."

When he hit on the desk, which was hidden behind a screen of elm-trees,
he had to face a true aristocrat--and not in muslins, either. If the
others were the daughters of earls, this was the authentic countess in a
tea-gown.

He put down Leek's sovereign.

"Haven't you anything smaller?" snapped the countess.

"I'm sorry I haven't," he replied.

She picked up the sovereign scornfully, and turned it over.

"It's very awkward," she muttered.

Then she unlocked two drawers, and unwillingly gave him eighteen and
sixpence in silver and copper, without another word and without looking
at him.

"Thank you," said he, pocketing it nervously.

And, amid reiterated cries of "Mathah!" "Mathaw!" "Mathah!" he hurried
away, unregarded, unregretted, splendidly repudiated by these delicate
refined creatures who were struggling for a livelihood in a great city.

_Alice Challice_

"I suppose you are Mr. Leek, aren't you?" a woman greeted him as he
stood vaguely hesitant outside St. George's Hall, watching the afternoon
audience emerge. He started back, as though the woman with her trace of
Coc