ned. She was kneeling before an open packing-case and holding
an object that she had drawn from it. Owen suddenly recognised the case.
It was the one that Gwendolen yesterday had sent down to Mr. Glazebrook.
He called this person, raising his hat, and the lady looked round at
him, too preoccupied to express her recognition of her mistake by more
than a vague murmur of thanks. "Mr. Glazebrook," she said, holding up a
whitish object, "may I have this? Is it expensive?"

"Well, really, I only glanced over the box. A customer sent it down to
me to dispose of, and I didn't think there was anything in it worth
much. Let me see, Mrs. Waterlow; it's a pagoda, I take it, a Chinese
pagoda. We've had them from time to time, in ivory and smaller than
this."

"This is in porcelain," said the lady, "and beautifully moulded."

"I see, I see," said Mr. Glazebrook, taking the fragile top segment of
the disjointed pagoda in his hand, and rather at a loss; "and it's
slightly damaged."

The lady in gray evidently was not a shrewd bargainer. "Only a little,"
she said. "One or two bits have been chipped out of the roofs, and it's
lost one or two of its little crystal rings; but I think it's in quite
good condition, and I have it all here." She was placing one segment
upon the other. "They are all made to fit, you see, with the little
openings in each story."

She had built it up beside her as she knelt on the floor, and it stood
like a fragile, fantastic ghost, with the upward tilt of its tiled
roofs, its embossed patterns, and the crystal rings trembling from each
angle of the roofs like raindrops. "What a darling!" said Mrs. Waterlow.
"How much do you ask for it, Mr. Glazebrook?"

Mr. Glazebrook, adjusting his knowledge of the limitations of Mrs.
Waterlow's purse to his present appreciation of the pagoda and of her
desire for it, said genially, after a moment, that from an old customer
like herself he would ask only forty-five shillings.

"Well, I think it's a great bargain, Mr. Glazebrook," said Mrs.
Waterlow. "And I'll have it."

"Shall I send it round?" Mr. Glazebrook asked.

"Yes, please; or, no, it isn't heavy,"--she lifted it with both hands,
rising with it and looking like a Saint Barbara holding her tower,--"I
can manage it to just round the corner. Wrap it up for me, and I'll
carry it off myself."

When Owen saw his cousin again at lunch, the red lacquer box had not yet
arrived, and, with a touch of friendly mockery, h