Royalties are frumps, aren't they? And
that ruby! I don't see how she dares wear it!"

"I am not particularly fond of it; but it's a fad of hers. She likes
to wear it on state occasions. I have often wondered if it is really
the Nana Sahib's ruby, as her uncle claimed. Driver, the Savoy, and
remember it carefully; the Savoy."

"Yes, sir; I understand, sir. But we'll all be some time, sir.
Collision forward is what holds us, sir."

Alone again, Kitty Killigrew leaned back, thinking of the man who had
just left her and of his beautiful wife. If only she might some day
have a romance like theirs! Presently she peered out of the
off-window. A brood of _Siegfried_-dragons prowled about, now going
forward a little, now swerving, now pausing; lurid eyes and threatening
growls.

Once upon a time, in her pigtail days, when her father was going to be
rich and was only half-way between the beginning and the end of his
ambition, Kitty had gone to a tent-circus. Among other things she had
looked wonderingly into the dim, blurry glass-tank of the "human fish,"
who was at that moment busy selling photographs of himself. To-night,
in searching for comparisons, this old forgotten picture recurred to
her mind; blithely memory brought it forth and threw it upon the
screen. All London had become a glass-tank, filled with human
pollywogs.

She did not want to marry a title; she did not want to marry money; she
did not want to marry at all. Poor kindly dad, who believed that she
could be made happy only by marrying a title. As if she was not as
happy now as she was ever destined to be!

Voices. Two men were speaking near the curb-door. She turned her head
involuntarily in this direction. There were no lights in the frontage
before which stood her cab, which intervened between the Brocken haze
in the street, throwing a square of Stygian shadow against the fog,
with right and left angles of aureola. She could distinguish no shapes.

"Cheer up, old top; you're in hard luck."

"I'm a bally ass."

"No, no; only a ripping good sporty game all the way through."

Oddly enough, Kitty sensed the irony. She wondered if the speaker's
companion did.

"Well, a wager's a wager."

"And you're the last chap to welch a square bet. What's the odds? My
word, I didn't urge you to change the stakes."

"Didn't you?"

The voice was young and pleasant; and Kitty was sure that the owner's
face was even as pleasant as his voic