taste surprised me. But I soon found it was the second volume of
my _edition de luxe_ of Louandre's _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to
whose place on the shelves sheer feminine instinct must have
guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray's proposed visit. She
jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and sent my
beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple of
hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I
picked it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.

"Carlotta," said I, "the first thing you have to learn here is
that books in England are more precious than babies in
Alexandretta. If you pitch them about in this fashion you will
murder them and I shall have you hanged."

This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for
reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further
into the subject of clothes.

"In fact," I concluded, "you will be dressed like a lady." She
opened the book at a gaudy picture, "_France, XVI(ieme)
Siecle--Saltimbanque et Bohemmienne_," and pointed to the female
mountebank. This young person wore a bright green tunic,
bordered with gold and finished off at the elbows and waist with
red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the sleeves of which
reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white carnations
stuck in ivy.

"I will get a dress like that," said Carlotta.

I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and