had washed their hands of me, and I was left in a strange hotel, practically without a sou—unless the Turnours chose to be inconveniently generous, and packed me off with a ticket to Paris—I should find it very difficult to escape from my Corn Plaster admirer. This time there would be no kind Lady Kilmarny to whom I could appeal.
Between two evils, one chooses that which makes less fuss. It was n't as intricate to risk facing Monsieur Charretier as it was to eat soap and be seized with convulsions; so I went about my business, waiting upon her ladyship as if I had not been in the throes of a mental earthquake. She was not particularly cross, because the gentleman whose acquaintance I had thrust upon her might turn out to be Somebody, in which case my clumsiness would be a blessing in disguise; but if she had boxed my ears I should hardly have felt it.
Bent upon dazzling the eyes of potentates in the dining-room, and outshining possible princesses, the lady was very particular about her dress. Although the big luggage had gone on by train to some town of more importance (in her eyes) than Avignon, she had made me keep out a couple of gowns rather better suited for a first night of opera in Paris than for dinner at the best of provincial hotels. She chose the smarter of these toilettes, a black chiffon velvet embroidered with golden tiger-lilies, and filled in with black net from shoulder to throat. Then the blue jewel-bag was opened, and a nodding diamond tiger-lily to match the golden ones was carefully selected from a blinding array of brilliants, to glitter in her masses of copper hair. Round her neck went a rope of pearls that fell to the waist whose slenderness I had just, with a
