icate, a wrinkle to remove, a moth-patch to
bleach, a grey hair to dye; nothing was impossible here, not even
credulity. It was but meet that the mistress should steal past the
servant, that the servant should dodge the mistress. Every woman
craves beauty, but she does not want the public to know that her
beauty is of the kind in which nature has no hand. No man is a hero to
his valet; no woman is a beauty to her maid. In and out, to and fro;
the social leader, the shop-girl, the maid, the woman of the town, the
actress, the thin old spinster and the fat matron, here might they be
found.

At rare intervals a man was seen to ring the bell, but he was either a
bill-collector or a husband in search of his wife.

The proprietress knew everybody intimately--by sight. She was squat,
dyed, rouged and penciled, badly, too. She was written down in the
city directory as Madame de Chevreuse, but she was emphatically not of
French extraction. In her alphabet there were generally but
twenty-five letters; there were frequent times when she had no idea
that there existed such a letter as "g." How she came to appropriate
so distinguished a name as De Chevreuse was a puzzle. Her husband--for
she had a husband--was always reading French history in English,
and doubtless this name appealed to his imagination and romance.
Nobody knew what Madame's real name was, nor that of her husband, for
he was always called "Monseer."

The reception-room was decorated after the prevailing fashion. There
was gilt and pretense. There were numerous glass cases, filled with
lotions and skin-foods and other articles of toilet; there were
faceless heads adorned with all shades of hair, scalps, pompadours,
and wigs. A few false-faces grinned or scowled or smirked from frames
or corners where they were piled. There were tawdry masquerade
costumes, too, and theatrical make-up. Curtains divided the several
shampooing booths, and a screen cut off the general view of the
operation of beauty. However, there were chinks large enough for the
inquisitive, and everybody was inquisitive who patronized Madame de
Chevreuse, pronounced Chevroose.

And always and ever there prevailed without regeneration the odor of
cheap perfumes and scented soaps.

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene left her carriage at the door, perfectly willing
that the neighborhood should see her alight. She climbed the steps,
stately and imposing. She was one of the few women who could overawe
the homely g