It was Louisa Mebbin who drew attention to the fact that the goat
was in death-throes from a mortal bullet-wound, while no trace of
the rifle's deadly work could be found on the tiger. Evidently
the wrong animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed
to heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle,
accelerated by senile decay. Mrs. Packletide was pardonably
annoyed at the discovery; but, at any rate, she was the possessor
of a dead tiger, and the villagers, anxious for their thousand
rupees, gladly connived at the fiction that she had shot the
beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid companion. Therefore did Mrs.
Packletide face the cameras with a light heart, and her pictured
fame reached from the pages of the TEXAS WEEKLY SNAPSHOT to the
illustrated Monday supplement of the NOVOE VREMYA. As for Loona
Bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for weeks,
and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was a
model of repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined;
there are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.

From Curzon Street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the Manor
House, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and it
seemed a fitting and appropriate thing when Mrs. Packletide went
to the County Costume Ball in the character of Diana. She refused
to fall in, however, with Clovis's tempting suggestion of a
primeval dance party, at which every one should wear the skins of
beasts they had recently slain. "I should be in rather a Baby
Bunting condition," confessed Clovis, "with a miserable rabbit-
skin or two to wrap up in, but then," he added, with a rather
malicious glance at Diana's proportions, "my figure is quite as
good as that Russian dancing boy's."