ship missed the point. She even allowed her face to
relax into a faint smile of pleasure.

"This isn't bad," she condescended to remark.

"I thought of asking your ladyship and Sir Samuel if there would be any
objection to my sending that to a Society motoring paper, and labelling
it 'Sir Samuel and Lady Turnour's new sixty-horse-power Aigle on tour
in Provence.' Or, if you would prefer my not using your name, I--"

"I see no reason why you should _not_ use it," her ladyship cut in
hastily, "and I'm sure Sir Samuel won't mind. Make a little extra money
in that way if you like, while we're on the road, as you have this
talent."

She gave him back the book, quite graciously, and the chauffeur began
sketching me. In three minutes there I was--the "abominable little
flirt!" in hat and veil, with Lady Turnour's bag in my hand, quite a
neat figure of a motor maid.

"You may put, if you like, 'Lady Turnour's maid,'" said that young
person's mistress, "if you think it would give some personal interest to
your sketch for the paper."

"Oh, this is for quite a different sort of thing," he explained. "Not
devoted to society news at all: more for caricatures and _funny_ bits."

"Oh, then I should certainly not wish my name to appear in _that_,"
returned her ladyship, her tone adding that, on the other hand, such a
publication was as suitable as it was welcome to a portrait of _me_.

"Now, Elise, I wish you to take those things off at _once_, and come to
my room," she finished. "Mind, I don't want you should keep me waiting!
And you can hand over that bag."

No hope of another word between us! Mr. Jack Dane saw this, and that it
would be unwise to try for it. Pocketing the sketch-book, he saluted
Lady Turnour with a finger to the height of his eyebrows, which gesture
visibly added to her sense of importance. Then, without glancing at me,
he turned and walked off.

It was not until he had disappeared round the bend of the corridor that
her ladyship thought it right to leave me.

I knew that she had made this little expedition in search of her maid
with the sole object of seeing what the mouse did while the cat was
away--a trick worthy of her lodging-house past! And I knew equally well
that before I tapped at her door a little later she had examined the
contents of the blue bag to make sure that I had extracted nothing. How
I pity the long procession of "slaveys" who must have followed each
other drearily in that lodging-h