put lies in books?"

"To accentuate the Truth, so that it shall prevail," I answered.

This was too hard a nut for Carlotta to crack. She was silent for a
moment. She reverted, ruefully, to the intelligible.

"I thought I was beautiful," she said.

"Who told you so?"

"Pasquale."

"Pasquale has no sense," said I. "There are men to whom all women who
are not seventy and toothless and rheumy at the eyes are beautiful.
Pasquale has said the same to every woman he has met. He is a Lothario
and a Don Juan and a Caligula and a Faublas and a Casanova."

"And he tells lies, too?"

"Millions of them," said I. "He contracts with their father Beelzebub
for a hundred gross a day."

"Pasquale is very pretty and he makes me laugh and I like him," said
Carlotta.

"I am very sorry to hear it," said I.

The griffon, who had been sniffing at Carlotta's skirts, suddenly leaped
into her lap. With a swift movement of her hand she swept the poor
little creature, as if it had been a noxious insect, yards away.

"Carlotta!" I cried angrily, springing to my feet.

The ladies who owned the beast rushed to their whining pet and looked
astonished daggers at Carlotta. When they picked it up, it sat dangling
a piteous paw. Carlotta rose, merely scared at my anger. I raised my
hat.

"I am more than sorry. I can't tell you how sorry I am. I hope the
little dog is not hurt. My ward, for whom I offer a thousand apologies,
is a Mohammedan, to whom all dogs are unclean. Please attribute the
accident to religious instinct."

The younger of the two, who had been examining the paw, looked up with a
smile.

"Your ward is forgiven. Punch oughtn't to jump on strange ladies' laps,
whether they are Mohammedans or not. Oh! he is more frightened than
hurt. And I," she added, with a twinkling eye, "am more hurt than
frightened, because Sir Marcus Ordeyne doesn't recognise me."

So Carlotta had nearly killed the dog of an unrecalled acquaintance.

"I do indeed recognise you now," said I, mendaciously. I seem to have
been lying to-day through thick and thin. "But in the confusion of the
disaster--"

"You sat next me at lunch one day last winter, at Mrs. Ordeyne's,"
interrupted the lady, "and you talked to me of transcendental
mathematics."

I remembered. "The crime," said I, "has lain heavily on my conscience."

"I don't believe a word of it," she laughed, dismissing me with a bow. I
raised my hat and joined Carlotta.

It was a Miss Gasc