d like to be with you, awfully--"

She looked across with a look half mischievous, half beseeching at
the erect Max. He bowed as he sat at table.

"I think we shall all be honoured," he said.

"Certainly," said Louis, bowing also over his tea-cup.

Geoffrey inclined his head, and Ciccio lowered his eyelashes in
indication of agreement.

"Now then," said Madame briskly, "we are all agreed. Tonight we will
have a bottle of wine on it. Yes, gentlemen? What d'you say?
Chianti--hein?"

They all bowed above the table.

"And Miss Houghton shall have her professional name, eh? Because we
cannot say Miss Houghton--what?"

"Do call me Alvina," said Alvina.

"Alvina--Al-vy-na! No, excuse me, my dear, I don't like it. I don't
like this 'vy' sound. Tonight we shall find a name."

After tea they inquired for a room for Alvina. There was none in the
house. But two doors away was another decent lodging-house, where a
bedroom on the top floor was found for her.

"I think you are very well here," said Madame.

"Quite nice," said Alvina, looking round the hideous little room,
and remembering her other term of probation, as a maternity nurse.

She dressed as attractively as possible, in her new dress of black
voile, and imitating Madame, she put four jewelled rings on her
fingers. As a rule she only wore the mourning-ring of black enamel
and diamond, which had been always on Miss Frost's finger. Now she
left off this, and took four diamond rings, and one good sapphire.
She looked at herself in her mirror as she had never done before,
really interested in the effect she made. And in her dress she
pinned a valuable old ruby brooch.

Then she went down to Madame's house. Madame eyed her shrewdly, with
just a touch of jealousy: the eternal jealousy that must exist
between the plump, pale partridge of a Frenchwoman, whose black hair
is so glossy and tidy, whose black eyes are so acute, whose black
dress is so neat and _chic_, and the rather thin Englishwoman in
soft voile, with soft, rather loose brown hair and demure, blue-grey
eyes.

"Oh--a difference--what a difference! When you have a little more
flesh--then--" Madame made a slight click with her tongue. "What a
good brooch, eh?" Madame fingered the brooch. "Old paste--old
paste--antique--"

"No," said Alvina. "They are real rubies. It was my
great-grandmother's."

"Do you mean it? Real? Are you sure--"

"I think I'm quite sure."

Madame scrutinized the jewels wit