drawing-room. Her securities, her bonds of the City of Paris, ever
increasing! Gilbert had tried to induce her to accept more attractive
investments. But she would not. Never! These were her consols, part of
her religion. Bonds of the City of Paris had fallen in value, but not
in her dogmatic esteem. The passionate little miser that was in her
surveyed them with pleasure, even with assurance; but they were still
far too few to stand for the realisation of her dream. And she might
have to sell some of them soon in order to live. She replaced them
carefully in the drawer with dejection unabated.

When she glanced at the table again she saw an envelope. Inexplicably
she had not noticed it before. She seized it in hope--and recognised
in the address the curious hand of her landlord. It contained a week's
notice to quit. The tenancy of the flat was weekly. This was the last
blow. All the invisible powers of London were conspiring together to
shatter the profession. What in the name of the Holy Virgin had come
over the astounding, incomprehensible city? Then there was a ring at
the bell. Marthe? No, Marthe would never ring; she had a key and
she would creep in. A lover? A rich, spendthrift, kind lover? Hope
flickered anew in her desolated heart.

It was the other pretty lady--a newcomer--who lived in the house:
a rather stylish woman of about thirty-five, unusually fair, with
regular features and a very dignified carriage, indeed not unimposing.
They had met once, at the foot of the stairs. Christine was not sure
of her name. She proclaimed herself to be Russian, but Christine
doubted the assertion. Her French had no trace of a foreign accent;
and in view of the achieve-merits of the Russian Army ladies were
finding it advantageous to be of Russian blood. Still she had a fine
cosmopolitan air to which Christine could not pretend. They engaged