end of the season, I didn't see her ladyship again for a long while.

When I did it was at the Hotel Bristol in Paris, and she was in widow's
weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. He never dropped
into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier than was expected, and
hanging on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and her fortune, though
tidy, was nothing very big--not as that class reckons. By luck I was
told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could speak
English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.

"Well," I says, "I suppose you'll be bossing that bar in Capetown now
before long?"

"Talk sense," she answers. "How can the Marchioness of Appleford marry a
hotel keeper?"

"Why not," I says, "if she fancies him? What's the good of being a
Marchioness if you can't do what you like?"

"That's just it," she snaps out; "you can't. It would not be doing the
straight thing by the family. No," she says, "I've spent their money,
and I'm spending it now. They don't love me, but they shan't say as I
have disgraced them. They've got their feelings same as I've got mine."

"Why not chuck the money?" I says. "They'll be glad enough to get it
back," they being a poor lot, as I heard her say.

"How can I?" she says. "It's a life interest. As long as I live I've
got to have it, and as long as I live I've got to remain the Marchioness
of Appleford."