found on the tiger. Evidently the wrong
animal had been hit, and the beast of prey had succumbed to
heart-failure, caused by the sudden report of the rifle, accelerated by
senile decay. Mrs. Packletide was pardonably annoyed at the discovery;
but, at any rate, she was the possessor of a dead tiger, and the
villagers, anxious for their thousand rupees, gladly connived at the
fiction that she had shot the beast. And Miss Mebbin was a paid
companion. Therefore did Mrs. Packletide face the cameras with a light
heart, and her pictured fame reached from the pages of the TEXAS WEEKLY
SNAPSHOT to the illustrated Monday supplement of the NOVOE VREMYA. As
for Loona Bimberton, she refused to look at an illustrated paper for
weeks, and her letter of thanks for the gift of a tiger-claw brooch was
a model of repressed emotions. The luncheon-party she declined; there
are limits beyond which repressed emotions become dangerous.

From Curzon Street the tiger-skin rug travelled down to the Manor
House, and was duly inspected and admired by the county, and it seemed
a fitting and appropriate thing when Mrs. Packletide went to the County
Costume Ball in the character of Diana. She refused to fall in,
however, with Clovis's tempting suggestion of a primeval dance party,
at which every one should wear the skins of beasts they had recently
slain. "I should be in rather a Baby Bunting condition," confessed
Clovis, "with a miserable rabbit-skin or two to wrap up in, but then,"
he added, with a rather malicious glance at Diana's proportions, "my
figure is quite as good as that Russian dancing boy's."

"How amused every one would be if they knew what really happened," said
Louisa Mebbin a few days after the ball.

"What do you mean?" asked Mrs. Packletide quickly.

"How you shot the goat and frightened the tiger to death," said Miss
Mebbin, with her disagreeably pleasant laugh.

"No one would believe it," said Mrs. Packletide, her face changing
colour as rapidly as though it were going through a book of patterns
before post-time.

"Loona Bimberton would," said Miss Mebbin. Mrs. Packletide's face
settled on an unbecoming shade of greenish white.

"You surely wouldn't give me away?" she asked.

"I've seen a week-end cottage near Dorking that I should rather like to
buy," said Miss Mebbin with seeming irrelevance. "Six hundred and
eighty, freehold. Quite a bargain, only I don't happen to have the
money."

* * *