r coats and prepared to follow.

"Depends on my wife. If she's done up--"

"Ah!" said Lord Holme, striking a match, and holding out his cigarette
case, regardless of regulations.

A momentary desire to look in at the Elwyns' possessed him. Then he
thought of a supper-party and forgot it.

CHAPTER XI

MRS. WOLFSTEIN was right. There was money in Miss Schley's performance.
Her sly impropriety appealed with extraordinary force to the peculiar
respectability characteristic of the British temperament, and her
celebrity, hitherto mainly social, was suddenly and enormously
increased. Already a popular person, she became a popular actress, and
was soon as well-known to the world in the streets and the suburbs as
to the world in the drawing-rooms of Mayfair. And this public celebrity
greatly increased the value that was put upon her in private--especially
the value put upon her by men.

The average man adores being connected openly with the woman who is the
rage of the moment. It flatters his vanity and makes him feel good
all over. It even frequently turns his head and makes him almost as
intoxicated as a young girl with adulation received at her first ball.

The combination of Miss Schley herself and Miss Schley's celebrity--or
notoriety--had undoubtedly turned Lord Holme's head. Perhaps he had not
the desire to conceal the fact. Certainly he had not the finesse. He
presented his turned head to the world with an audacious simplicity that
was almost laughable, and that had in it an element of boyishness not
wholly unattractive to those who looked on--the casual ones to whom
even the tragedies of a highly-civilised society bring but a quiet and
cynical amusement.

Lady Holme was not one of these. Her strong temper was token of a vivid
temperament. Till now this vivid temperament had been rocked in the
cradle of an easy, a contented, a very successful life. Such storms as
had come to her had quickly passed away. The sun had never been far off.
Her egoism had been constantly flattered. Her will had been perpetually
paramount. Even the tyranny of Lord Holme had been but as the tyranny
of a selfish, thoughtless, pleasure-seeking boy who, after all, was
faithful to her and was fond of her. His temperamental indifference to
any feelings but his own had been often concealed and overlaid by his
strong physical passion for his wife's beauty, his profound satisfaction
in having carried off and in possessing a woman admired an