``She may yet be left without a single pair of stockings.''

``The world's a thief,'' declared Mills, with the utmost composure. `Ìt wouldn't mind robbing a lonely traveller.''

``He is so subtle.'' Blunt remembered my existence for the purpose of that remark and as usual it made me very uncomfortable. ``Perfectly true. A lonely traveller. They are all in the scramble from the lowest to the highest. Heavens! What a gang! There was even an Archbishop in it.''

``_Vous plaisantez,_'' said Mills, but without any marked show of incredulity.

`Ì joke very seldom,'' Blunt protested earnestly. ``That's why I haven't mentioned His Majestywhom God preserve. That would have been an exaggeration. . . . However, the end is not yet. We were talking about the beginning. I have heard that some dealers in fine objects, quite mercenary people of course (my mother has an experience in that world), show sometimes an astonishing reluctance to part with some specimens, even at a good price. It must be very funny. It's just possible that the uncle and the aunt have been rolling in tears on the floor, amongst their oranges, or beating their heads against the walls from rage and despair.

But I doubt it.

Page 15

And in any case Allegre is not the sort of person that gets into any vulgar trouble. And it's just possible that those people stood openmouthed at all that magnificence. They weren't poor, you know; therefore it wasn't incumbent on them to be honest. They are still there in the old respectable warehouse, I understand. They have kept their position in their _quartier,_ I believe. But they didn't keep their niece. It might have been an act of sacrifice! For I seem to remember hearing that after attending for a while some school round the corner the child had been set to keep the books of that orange business. However it might have been, the first fact in

Rita's and Allegre's common history is a journey to Italy, and then to Corsica. You know Allegre had a house

The Arrow of Gold

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in Corsica somewhere. She has it now as she has everything he ever had; and that Corsican palace is the portion that will stick the longest to Dona Rita, I imagine. Who would want to buy a place like that? I

suppose nobody would take it for a gift. The fellow was having houses built all over the place.