"Do you know what you are doing--casting a respectable wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a hundred pounds in her pocket?
Do you think she will henceforward give a thought to her home or husband?
Do you want to ruin my domestic peace, drive me to drink, and wreck my household ?" "If you do that again," said I, rubbing my shoulder, "I'll give her two hundred." When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa, smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and turning over the pages of a book.

This sign of literary taste surprised me.

But I soon found it was the second volume of my _edition de luxe_ of Louandre's _Les Arts Somptuaires_, to whose place on the shelves sheer feminine instinct must have guided her.

I announced Mrs.McMurray's proposed visit.

She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor.