ation
is not the only instruction which fits you for drawing-room war to the
knife.

Her small reckoning was paid, and she had drawn on one long, tawny
glove. Even this act was a luxury to watch, so full it was of the
feminine, of the stretching, indolent ease that the flesh and the spirit
of this creature invariably seemed to move with. But why didn't she go?
This became my wonder now, while she slowly drew on the second glove.
She was taking more time than it needed.

"Your flowers are for sale, too?"

This, after her silence, struck me as being something planned out after
her original plan. The original plan had finished with that second
assertion of her ownership of John (or, I had better say, of his
ownership in her), that doubt she had expressed as to his being willing
to consent to any further postponement of their marriage. Of course she
had expected, and got herself ready for, some thrust on the postponement
subject.

Eliza crossed from behind her counter to where the Exchange flowers
stood on the opposite side of the room and took some of them up.

"But those are inferior," said Hortense. "These." And she touched
rightly the bowl in which my roses stood close beside Eliza's ledger.

Eliza paused for one second. "Those are not for sale."

Hortense paused, too. Then she hung to it. "They are so much the best."
She was holding her purse.

"I think so, too," said Eliza. "But I cannot let any one have them."

Hortense put her purse away. "You know best. Shall you furnish us
flowers as well as cake?"

Eliza's sweetness rose an octave, softer and softer. "Why, they have
flowers there! Didn't you know?"

And to this last and frightful peck through the bars Hortense found no
retaliation. With a bow to Eliza, and a total oblivion of me, she went
out of the Exchange. She had flaunted "her" John in Eliza's face, she
had, as they say, rubbed it in that he was "her" John;--but was it such
a neat, tidy victory, after all? She had given away the last word to
Eliza, presented her with that poisonous speech which when translated
meant:--

"Yes, he's 'your' John; and you're climbing up him into houses where
you'd otherwise be arrested for trespass." For it was in one of the
various St. Michael houses that the marriage would be held, owing to the
nomadic state of the Rieppes.

Yes, Hortense had gone altogether too close to the cage at the end,
and, in that repetition of her taunt about "furnishing" supplies for t