"But, dear lady," I cried in despair, "she has but one garment
--and that a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that
belonged to a dancer of the second Empire! She is also barefoot."

"Then I'll come round myself and see what can be done."

"And by Jove, so will I!" cried McMurray.

"You'll do such thing," said his wife

"If I gave you a cheque for 100," said I, "do you think you
could get her what she wants, to go on with?"

"A hundred pounds!" The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and
I thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his
sledgehammer of a hand down on my shoulder.

"Man!" he roared. "Do you know what you are doing--casting a
respectable wife and mother of a family loose among London
drapery shops with a hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think
she will henceforward give a thought to her home or husband? Do
you want to ruin my domestic peace, drive me to drink, and wreck
my household?"

"If you do that again," said I, rubbing my shoulder, "I'll give
her two hundred."

When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa,
smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my
box) and turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary