n be had."

"And they call _us_ mountebanks!" cried the girl. "I've been so glad to
see you again--do you want another sitting?" she went on to Nick as if
to take leave of him.

"As many as you'll give me--I shall be grateful for all," he made
answer. "I should like to do you as you are at present. You're totally
different from the woman I painted--you're wonderful."

"The Comic Muse!" she laughed. "Well, you must wait till our first
nights are over--I'm _sur les dents_ till then. There's everything to do
and I've to do it all. That fellow's good for nothing, for nothing but
domestic life"--and she glanced at Basil Dashwood. "He hasn't an
idea--not one you'd willingly tell of him, though he's rather useful for
the stables. We've got stables now--or we try to look as if we had:
Dashwood's ideas are _de cette force_. In ten days I shall have more
time."

"The Comic Muse? Never, never," Peter protested. "You're not to go
smirking through the age and down to posterity--I'd rather see you as
Medusa crowned with serpents. That's what you look like when you look
best."

"That's consoling--when I've just bought a lovely new bonnet, all red
roses and bows. I forgot to tell you just now that when you're an
ambassador you may propose anything you like," Miriam went on. "But
forgive me if I make that condition. Seriously speaking, come to me
glittering with orders and I shall probably succumb. I can't resist
stars and garters. Only you must, as you say, have them all. I _don't_
like to hear Mr. Dormer talk the slang of the studio--like that phrase
just now: it _is_ a fall to a lower state. However, when one's low one
must crawl, and I'm crawling down to the Strand. Dashwood, see if
mamma's ready. If she isn't I decline to wait; you must bring her in a
hansom. I'll take Mr. Dormer in the brougham; I want to talk with Mr.
Dormer; he must drive with me to the theatre. His situation's full of
interest." Miriam led the way out of the room as she continued to
chatter, and when she reached the house-door with the four men in her
train the carriage had just drawn up at the garden-gate. It appeared
that Mrs. Rooth was not ready, and the girl, in spite of a remonstrance
from Nick, who had a sense of usurping the old lady's place, repeated
her injunction that she should be brought on in a cab. Miriam's
gentlemen hung about her at the gate, and she insisted on Nick's taking
his seat in the brougham and taking it first. Before she entered