od bless us! to think not one of them had the sense, from
first to last, to guess the thing was paste."

Alston enjoyed his brief triumph, a little surprised at it himself. He
had no idea she would back down instantly, nor indeed, though it were
hammered into her, that she would own the game was up. The same recoil
struck her and she ludicrously cocked an eye.

"I shall give you a lot of trouble yet though. The necklace may be a
dead issue, but I'm a living dog, Alston Choate. Don't they say a living
dog is better than a dead lion? Well, I'm living and I'm here."

He saw her here indefinitely, rolling about in hacks, in phaetons, in
victorias, in motors, perpetually stirring two houses at least to
nervous misery. There would be no running away from her. They would have
her absurdly tied about their necks forever.

"Madame Beattie!" said he. This was Alston's great day, he reflected,
with a grimace all to himself. He had never put so much impetuosity, so
much daring to the square inch, into any day before. He lounged back a
little in his chair, put his hands in his pockets and tried to feel
swaggering and at ease. Madame Beattie, he knew, wouldn't object to
swagger. And if it would help him dramatically, so much the better.
"Madame Beattie," he repeated, "I've a proposition to make to you. I
thought of it within the last minute."

Her eyes gleamed out at him expectantly, avariciously, with some
suspicion, too. She hoped it concerned money, but it seemed unlikely, so
chill a habit of life had men of Addington.

"It is absolutely my own idea," said Alston. "Nobody has suggested it,
nobody has anything whatever to do with it. If I give myself time to
think it over I sha'n't make it at all. What would you take to leave
Addington, lock, stock and barrel, cut stick to Europe and sign a paper
never to come back? There'd be other things in the paper. I should make
it as tight as I knew how."

Madame Beattie set her lips and looked him over, from his well-bred face
and his exceedingly correct clothes to his feet. She would never have
suspected an Addington man of such impetus, no one except perhaps Jeff
in the old days. What was the utmost an Addington man would do? She had
been used to consider them a meagre set.

"Well?" said Alston.

Madame Beattie blinked a little, and her mind came back.

"Ten thousand," she tossed him at a venture, in a violence of haste.

Alston shook his head.

"Too much," said he.

Madame