ready pretty nearly dead; or, in the alternative, a young
one just commencing a career of infamy!

'I'm awfully silly,' she whispered to herself. 'But still, if there
SHOULD be anything in it. And I must, I must, I must have that thing
for my dress!'

She looked again at the dim forms of her husband's clothes, pitched
anyhow on an ottoman. No! She could not stoop to theft!

So she murdered a mandarin; lying in bed there; not any particular
mandarin, a vague mandarin, the mandarin most convenient and suitable
under all the circumstances. She deliberately wished him dead, on the
off-chance of acquiring riches, or, more accurately, because she was
short of fourteen and fivepence in order to look perfectly splendid at
a ball.

In the morning when she woke up--her husband had already departed to
the works--she thought how foolish she had been in the night. She did
not feel sorry for having desired the death of a fellow-creature. Not
at all. She felt sorry because she was convinced, in the cold light of
day, that the charm would not work. Charlie's notions were really too
ridiculous, too preposterous. No! She must reconcile herself to wearing
a ball dress which was less than perfection, and all for the want of
fourteen and fivepence. And she had more nerves than ever!

She had nerves to such an extent that when she went to unlock the
drawer of her own private toilet-table, in which her prudent and fussy
husband forced her to lock up her rings and brooches every night, she
attacked the wrong drawer--an empty unfastened drawer that she never
used. And lo! the empty drawer was not empty. There was a sovereign
lying in it!

This gave her a start, connecting the discovery, as naturally at the
first blush she did, with the mandarin.

Surely it couldn't be, after all.

Then she came to her senses. What absurdity! A coincidence, of course,
nothing else? Besides, a mere sovereign! It wasn't enough. Charlie had
said 'rich for life'. The sovereign must have lain there for months and
months, forgotten.

However, it was none the less a sovereign. She picked it up, thanked
Providence, ordered the dog-cart, and drove straight to Brunt's. The
particular thing that she acquired was an exceedingly thin, slim, and
fetching silver belt--a marvel for the money, and the ideal waist
decoration for her wonderful white muslin gown. She bought it, and left
the shop.

And as she came out of the shop, she saw a street urchin holding out
th