pampered darling should.

'Then I'll wait for the next boat. But it'll be awkward.'

'Then I'll come. But I've got no things.'

He pushed up the trap-door.

Driver, Bond Street. And get on to yourself, for goodness' sake! Hurry!'

'You told me not to hurry,' grumbled the cabby.

'And now I tell you to hustle. See?'

'Shall you want me to call myself Belmont?' Nina asked.

'I chose it because it was a fine ten-horse-power name twenty years
ago,' said her father; and she murmured that she liked the name very
much.

As Lionel Belmont the Magnificent paid the cabman, and Nina walked
across the pavement into one of the most famous repositories of
expensive frippery in the world, she thrilled with the profoundest
pleasure her tiny soul was capable of. Foolish, simple Nina had achieved
the _nec plus ultra_ of her languorous dreams.

* * * * *

CLARICE OF THE AUTUMN CONCERTS

I

'What did you say your name was?' asked Otto, the famous concert
manager.

'Clara Toft.'

'That won't do,' he said roughly.

'My real proper name is Clarice,' she added, blushing. 'But----'

'That's better, that's better.' His large, dark face smiled carelessly.
'Clarice--and stick an "e" on to Toft--Clarice Tofte. Looks like either
French or German then. I'll send you the date. It'll be the second week
in September. And you can come round to the theatre and try the
piano--Bechstein.'

'And what do you think I had better play, Mr. Otto?'

'You must play what you have just played, of course. Tschaikowsky's all
the rage just now. Your left hand's very weak, especially in the last
movement. You've got to make more noise--at my concerts. And see here,
Miss Toft, don't you go and make a fool of me. I believe you have a
great future, and I'm backing my opinion. Don't you go and make a fool
of me.'

'I shall play my very best,' she smiled nervously. 'I'm awfully obliged
to you, Mr. Otto.'

'Well,' he said, 'you ought to be.'

At the age of fifteen her father, an earthenware manufacturer, and the
flamboyant Alderman of Turnhill, in the Five Towns, had let her depart
to London to the Royal College of Music. Thence, at nineteen, she had
proceeded to the Conservatoire of Liege. At twenty-two she could play
the great concert pieces--Liszt's 'Rhapsodies Hongroises,' Chopin's
Ballade, Op. 47, Beethoven's Op. 111, etc.--in concert style, and she
was the wonder of the Five Towns when she visited Turnh