ing, had not moved from the fireplace since
she had taken up her position there. Women are as clever as Napoleon
or Julius Caesar in selecting strong positions when there is to be an
encounter, and a fireplace, with a solid mantelpiece to lean against,
to strike, to cry upon or to cling to, is one of the strongest.
The enemy is thus reduced to prowling about the room and handling
knick-knacks while he talks, or smashing them if he is of a violent
disposition.

The lady now leant back against the dingy marble shelf and laid one
white-gloved arm along it, in an attitude that was positively regal.
Her right hand might appropriately have been toying with the orb of
empire on the mantelpiece, and her left, which hung down beside her,
might have loosely held the sceptre. Mr. Van Torp, who often bought
large pictures, was reminded of one recently offered to him in
America, representing an empress. He would have bought the portrait if
the dealer could have remembered which empress it represented, but the
fact that he could not had seemed suspicious to Mr. Van Torp. It was
clearly the man's business to know empresses by sight.

From her commanding position the Lady Maud refused her husband's
invitation to go home with him.

'I shall certainly not go with you,' she said. 'Besides, I'm dining
early at the Turkish Embassy and we are going to the play. You need
not wait for me. I'll take care of myself this evening, thank you.'

'This is monstrous!' cried the fair man, and with a peculiarly
un-English gesture he thrust his hand into his thick hair.

The foreigner in despair has always amused the genuine Anglo-Saxon.
Lady Maud's lip did not curl contemptuously now, she did not raise
her eyebrows, nor did her eyes flash with scorn. On the contrary,
she smiled quite frankly, and the sweet ripple was in her voice, the
ripple that drove some men almost crazy.

'You needn't make such a fuss,' she said. 'It's quite absurd, you
know. Mr. Van Torp is an old friend of mine, and you have known him
ever so long, and he is a man of business. You are, are you not?' she
asked, looking to the American for assent.

'I'm generally thought to be that,' he answered.

'Very well. I came here, to Mr. Van Torp's rooms in the Temple,
before going to dinner, because I wished to see him about a matter of
business, in what is a place of business. It's all ridiculous nonsense
to talk about having caught me--and worse. That money is for a
charity, and