e said:

"Well, you have been unlucky, my dear Gwen. There was the most charming
piece of old Chinese porcelain in that scorned Cheltenham box, and I saw
Mr. Glazebrook sell it this morning to a lady who wasn't to be put off
by dust and newspapers and plush-framed plaques. She carried it off in
triumph, saying that it was a great bargain. And so it was; but she
might have had it for half the money if she hadn't informed Mr.
Glazebrook of its probable value."

Gwendolen fixed her mild, violet eyes upon him. "A piece of old Chinese
porcelain? Do you mean that silly white pagoda?"

"You did see it, then?"

"See it? Haven't I seen it all my life? It stood on a purple worsted mat
on a little bamboo table between the Nottingham lace curtains in one of
Aunt Pickthorne's drawing-room windows, and looked like some piece of
childish gimcrackery bought at a bazaar, where, I'll wager, she did buy
it."

"Well, Mrs. Waterlow evidently didn't think it gimcrackery, or, if she
did, she didn't mind. It looked to me, I confess, an exquisite thing.
But her admiration may have lent it its enchantment."

Gwendolen's eyes now fixed themselves more searchingly than before.

"Mrs. Waterlow? Did Mrs. Waterlow buy it? How did you know it was Mrs.
Waterlow? I thought you'd never met her."

"I haven't; but I heard Mr. Glazebrook call her by her name. She'd
wanted to buy a red lacquer box that I spotted in the window and had
gone in to get for you, my dear Gwen. It was too expensive for her,--so
that it is yours,--and she went rummaging into the back shop and found
your box with the things just as you and Mr. Glazebrook had left them,
and in no time she'd disinterred the pagoda."

Gwendolen apparently was so arrested by his story that she forgot for
the moment to thank him for the lacquer box.

"Do you know her?" he asked.

"Know her? Know Cicely Waterlow? Why, I've known her since she first
came to live here, years ago. She's a very dear friend of mine,"
Gwendolen said, adding: "How much did she pay for it? That wretched man
gave me only fifteen shillings for the lot."

"He made her pay forty-five shillings for the pagoda. I suspect myself
that it's worth ten times as much. Does she care for things,
too--lacquer and engraved glass?"

Gwendolen still showed preoccupation and, he fancied, a touch of
vexation.

"Care for them? Yes; who with any taste doesn't care for them? Cicely
has very good taste, too, in her little way. She doesn