.

"I was raised in Chicago. My parents were employed in the stockyards of
Armour. My father was the man who slit the throats of the pigs. He was a
dandy," she said in unemotional tones--and I noticed a little shiver of
repulsion ripple through Barbara and Doria. "When I was twelve, my
father kind of inherited lands in Albania, and we went back. Is there
anything more you'd like to know?"

She looked us all up and down, rather down than up, for she towered
above us, perfectly unconcerned mistress of the situation. Naturally we
made mute appeal to Jaffery. He stirred his huge bulk from the post and
plunged his hands into his pockets.

"I should like to know, Liosha," said he, in a rumble like thunder, "why
you have left my sister Euphemia and what you are doing here?"

"Euphemia is a damn fool," she said serenely. "She's a freak. She ought
to go round in a show."

"What have you been quarrelling about?" he asked.

"I never quarrel," she replied, regarding him with her calm brown eyes.
"It is not dignified."

"Then I repeat, most politely, Liosha--what are you doing here?"

She looked at Barbara. "I guess it isn't right to talk of money before
strangers."

Barbara smiled--glanced at me rebukingly. I pulled forward a chair and
invited the lady to sit--for she had been standing and her astonishing
entrance had flabbergasted ceremonious observance out of me. Whilst she
was accepting my belated courtesy, Barbara continued to smile and said:

"You mustn't look on us as strangers, Mrs. Prescott. We are all Mr.
Chayne's oldest and most intimate friends."

"Do tell us what the row was?" said Jaffery.

Liosha took calm stock of us, and seeing that we were a pleasant-faced
and by no means an antagonistic assembly--even Doria's curiosity lent
her a semblance of a sense of humour--she relaxed her Olympian serenity
and laughed a little, shewing teeth young and strong and exquisitely
white.

"I am here, Jaff Chayne," she said, "because Euphemia is a damn fool.
She took me this morning to your big street--the one where all the shops
are--"

"My dear lady," said Adrian, "there are about a hundred miles of such
streets in London."

"There's only one--" she snapped her fingers, recalling the name--"only
one Regent Street, I ever heard of," she replied crushingly. "It was
Regent Street. Euphemia took me there to shew me the shops. She made me
mad. For when I wanted to go in and buy things she dragged me away. If
she didn