ou are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine. You ought to be a
descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand. Rilboche, give Madame
some more chartreuse.'

And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses
in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her
peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her
carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.

There were always the finest chartreuse and curacoa in a liqueur cabinet
on Lady Kirkbank's dressing-table. The cabinet formed a companion to the
dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics,
powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the
manufacture of Georgie's complexion. The third bottle in the liqueur
case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest
replenished. Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate
habits. The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally
wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.

'One must always be at concert pitch in society, don't you know, my
dear,' said Georgie to her young protegee.

Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was
carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern
witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.

Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen
Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and
hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little
_cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an
afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers,
blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow
entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.

Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall
old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark
house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer: but the
staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple
telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine
Louis Seize.

Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened
little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher
than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires
had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon he