being reduced to walking with a
female; it made a girl look so unsuccessful.

At length Dodo decided that, even for Mary's sake, she could no longer
"stick it out" at the Bella Vista. She felt, she said, so wretched that
she was "quite off her bonbons." The crisis came at luncheon and
indirectly through the marmoset. Dodo paid well and regularly; therefore
she was tacitly allowed certain privileges, not always approved by her
fellow-guests. Diablette had been a standing cause of friction between
Lady Dauntrey and the dog's mistress; but the marmoset, its successful
rival in Dodo's affections, was grudgingly permitted whenever Lord
Dauntrey had borrowed fifty francs or so, to select its own fruit from
the dessert. Some people were even amused at seeing the tiny animal jump
from Dodo's lap on to the table, and pick out the best grapes in an
old-fashioned centre-piece. On the last fatal day, however, Lady
Dauntrey's nerves had been rasped by the loss of her fifth cook. When
the marmoset was taken suddenly and desperately ill in the bread plate,
Eve flew into a rage, and high words passed like rapier flashes between
her and Miss Wardropp. Dodo attributed her pet's seizure to the fact
that Dauntrey fruit was unfit even for a monkey's consumption, and Eve
informed the whole company that Dodo was a disgusting Australian pig.
This was the last insult. Dodo shrilly "gave notice," while the marmoset
was dying in her napkin. The meal ended in confusion; and Miss Wardropp
went away that afternoon with the living Diablette, the dead monkey,
two teddy bears, an umbrella-mosquito-net, and seven trunks.

"Ask that man for your money back!" she advised Mary on the doorstep. "I
don't say go to _her_, for she'd only tell you some lie. 'Lie and let
lie' is her motto. She's reduced lying to a fine art. But ask him for
your capital, my dear, and watch his face when you do it. Compared to
his wife he's a model, even if it's a model of all the vices."

Mary missed Dodo. Diablette had been an invincible and dangerous enemy
to the blue frog from the Mentone china shop, poor, blase Hilda, who
spent most of her time choking in flies a size too large for her, or
trying helplessly to push them down her blue throat with a tiny
turquoise hand. Dodo, however, had been a ray of brightness in the
house: meretricious, garish brightness perhaps; still she had given a
tinselline sparkle to the dull rooms when things were at their worst,
and Lady Dauntrey