e you I'll never take a woman _seriously_ again.
That's the mistake we make, taking 'em seriously. You see, sir, being a
chauffeur in the early days of motor-cars, I've had a tidy bit of
experience, if you understand what I mean. Because in them days a
chauffeur was like what an air-pilot is to-day. He didn't have to ask,
he didn't. And what I say is this--I say we're mugs to take 'em
seriously."

"You think we are!" bubbled Mr. Prohack emptily, perceiving that he had
to do with an individual whom misfortune had rendered impervious to
argument.

"I do, sir. And what's more, I say you never know where you are with any
woman."

"That I agree with," said Mr. Prohack, with a polite show of eagerness.
"But you're cutting yourself off from a great deal you know, Carthew,"
he added, thinking magnificently upon his adventure with Lady Massulam.

"There's a rare lot as would like to be in my place," murmured Carthew
with bland superiority. "If it's all the same to you, sir, I'll just go
and give her a look over before we start again." He scraped his chair
cruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority on
women.

It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and paying
the bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of the
long, empty dining-room table, a copy of _The Sunday Picture_, which was
the Sabbath edition of _The Daily Picture_. He got up and seized it,
expecting it to be at least a week old. It proved, however, to be as new
and fresh as it could be. Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at
its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both
known to him, side by side. One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the
West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known
Treasury official. The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because
Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to
Mrs. Arthur Prohack.

The shock of meeting Eve in _The Sunday Picture_ was terrible, but
equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in
regard to the ownership of the noble mansion. He had understood--or more
correctly he had been given to understand--that the house and its
contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as
celebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been. Assuredly neither
Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the
exquisite decorations an