AN apparition almost as startling had come to Garnett himself in the
shape of the mauve note received from his _concierge_ as he was
leaving the hotel for luncheon.

Not that, on the face of it, a missive announcing Mrs. Sam Newell's
arrival at Ritz's, and her need of his presence there that afternoon
at five, carried any special mark of the portentous. It was not her
being at Ritz's that surprised him. The fact that she was
chronically hard up, and had once or twice lately been so brutally
confronted with the consequences as to accept--indeed solicit--a
loan of five pounds from him: this circumstance, as Garnett knew,
would never be allowed to affect the general tenor of her existence.
If one came to Paris, where could one go but to Ritz's? Did he see
her in some grubby hole across the river? Or in a family _pension_
near the Place de l'Etoile? There was no affectation in her tendency
to gravitate toward what was costliest and most conspicuous. In
doing so she obeyed one of the profoundest instincts of her nature,
and it was another instinct which taught her to gratify the first at
any cost, even to that of dipping into the pocket of an impecunious
newspaper correspondent. It was a part of her strength--and of her
charm too--that she did such things naturally, openly, without any
of the ugly grimaces of dissimulation or compunction.

Her recourse to Garnett had of course marked a specially low ebb in
her fortunes. Save in moments of exceptional dearth she had richer
sources of supply; and he was nearly sure that, by running over the
"society column" of the Paris _Herald_, he should find an
explanation, not perhaps of her presence at Ritz's, but of her means
of subsistence there. What really perplexed him was not the
financial but the social aspect of the case. When Mrs. Newell had