CHAPTER VII.

There was a scraping and a stumbling sound in the second
floor front bedroom of Mrs. Jordan's lodgings in a by-way
of Fleet Street, at two o'clock in the morning. It came
up to Elfrida mixed with the rattle of a departing cab
over the paving-stones below, outside where the fog was
lifting and showing one street-lamp to another. Elfrida
in her attic had been sitting above the fog all night;
her single candle had not been obscured by it. The cab
had been paid and the andirons were being disturbed by
Mr. Golightly Ticke, returned from the Criterion Restaurant,
where he had been supping with the leading lady of the
Sparkle Company, at the leading, lady's expense. She
could afford it better than he could, she told him, and
that was extremely true, for Mr. Ticke had his capacities
for light comedy still largely to prove, while Mademoiselle
Phyllis Fane had almost disestablished herself upon the
stage, so long and so prosperously had she pirouetted
there. Mr. Golightly Ticke's case excited a degree of
the large compassion which Mademoiselle Phyllis had for
incipient genius of the interesting sex, and which served
her instead of virtue of the more ordinary sort. He had
a doable claim upon it, because, in addition to being
tall and fair and misunderstood by most people, with a
thin nose that went beautifully with a medieval costume,
he was such a gentleman. Phyllis loosened her purse-strings
instinctively, with genuine gratification, whenever this
young man approached. She believed in him; he had ideas,