valuation as an extremely hot potato, and her hero-worship had
gradually been turning into love. And now her hero had been shown to
have feet of clay. It was hard, I consider, on Raymond Parsloe Devine,
but that is how it goes in this world. You get a following as a
celebrity, and then you run up against another bigger celebrity and
your admirers desert you. One could moralize on this at considerable
length, but better not, perhaps. Enough to say that the glamour of
Raymond Devine ceased abruptly in that moment for Adeline, and her most
coherent thought at this juncture was the resolve, as soon as she got
up to her room, to burn the three signed photographs he had sent her
and to give the autographed presentation set of his books to the
grocer's boy.

Mrs. Smethurst, meanwhile, having rallied somewhat, was endeavouring to
set the feast of reason and flow of soul going again.

"And how do you like England, Mr. Brusiloff?" she asked.

The celebrity paused in the act of lowering another segment of cake.

"Dam good," he replied, cordially.

"I suppose you have travelled all over the country by this time?"

"You said it," agreed the Thinker.

"Have you met many of our great public men?"

"Yais--Yais--Quite a few of the nibs--Lloyid Gorge, I meet him. But----"
Beneath the matting a discontented expression came into his face, and