she was going to London: Not a Turk in Asia
Minor wakes up from his pipe-trance and thinks
he should like a tour in Frangistan; not a
Lascar coolie ships on board a homeward-bound
Indiaman; not a long-tailed vagabond of
Shanghai lays in a stock of rice and dried ducks for
a voyage across the main; not a Genoese beggarboy
is sold by his padrone to grind the organ to
the English heretics, but knows, although he
may scarcely have mastered the words to say it,
that he shall see London.

The locket! The locket! Lily knew that
she was about to do a naughty thing, and,
desperately as her mind was made up for the deed,
she tried to stave off the evil moment of
commission for yet a little time longer. Bishop, who
murdered the Italian boy, set him to play with
his children half an hour before he slew him.
He, too, had made up his mind; but he
luxuriated in deferring the thing for thirty
minutes. We like to put the consummation of
our villany off. A convict in a penitentiary told
me once, that he counted seven hundred and fifty,
neither more nor less, before he took pen in
hand to commit the forgery which sent him
to penal servitude for twenty years. I knew a
man who repaired to an appointment from which
his conscience told him sin would follow. As
he was biding tryst, a flash of remorse came
over him, and, turning a piece of money in his
pocket, he vowed that if, when he drew it out,
head should be uppermost, he would abandon his
intent, and go away before the victim came. He
drew forth the money, and head was uppermost;
—whereupon the man broke his vow and kept
his tryst to the bitter end. The flash of remorse
had died away.

So, while Lily knew well that the locket must
be sold, her poor little trembling spirit was
casting about on every side for a respite, were
it even of the briefest, from the inevitable act.
She must be quick about it. She knew that;
for discovery and pursuit, although not
probable, were just barely possible. But oh! for
another minute, another half-hour, before she
would be forced to confess her unworthiness in
her own eyes. Fortuitously, the bright morning
air reminded her that she was hungry; and she
remembered that she had had no breakfast.
Where was such a meal to be obtained? She
had walked as yet up one street and down
another, not purposeless, but irresolute, and
still staving off the evil time. She saw plenty
of café's around her: splendid cafés, all gilding
and plate-glass; second-rate cafés; tenth-rate
cafés, smelling of smoke, dirty, and generally ill
favoured. The large men with beards who were
visible in most of these cafés as she peeped
through the glazed doors frightened Lily.
There was one specially alarming creature
in a fluffy white hat, a great glass screwed
into one eye, a twisted chin-tuft like a colossal
comma: who, with his hands stuck in the
pockets of a pair of tartan trousers so wide at
the waist and so narrow at the ankles that they
looked like two jars of Scotch snuff, was standing,
smoking, on the steps of a coffee-house in
the Rue Montmartre. He greeted Lily with a
hideous leer as she passed him, sticking his arms
akimbo, and humming something about "La
Faridondaine." She blushed and quivered as
she hurried away. Oh! she must make haste to
get to England. A vague intuition told her that
Paris was a very wicked place, and that she was
but a lamb in the midst of five hundred thousand
wolves.

She saw at last a humble little shop in whose
windows were displayed two large bowls full of
milk, with a sky-blue basis and a yellow scum
on the surface; sundry eggs; a bouquet of
faded flowers; a siphon of eau de Seltz; a flap
of raw meat with a causeway of bone running
through it; several huge white coffee-cups and
saucers; and the Siècle newspaper of the week
before last. From sundry little blue bannerols
bearing inscriptions in white letters, Lily learnt
that this was a Crêmerie; that its sign was Au
bon Marché; that bifteks, bouillon, coffee, and
chocolate were to be had there at all hours, and
that meals were even portés en ville—carried to
the patrons of the establishment at their own
residences. Furthermore, there was a tariff of
prices which assured Lily as to the capacity of
her purse to endure the charges of such a very
modest little breakfast as she needed.

She entered the Cheap Creamery, and making
known her wants to a brawny Norman wench
with big gold earrings, who had a hoarse voice,
the possession of which a corporal in the
Chasseurs d'Afrique would not have disdained,
and who, when she was called, did not answer
"Voilà!" after the fashion of waiters generally,
but thundered forth, "Vous y êtes!" Murmuring
her brief commands to this formidable
servitor, Lily was presently supplied with a big
white bowl full of chocolate, and a large piece
of bread, the which (the whole costing but eight
sous) made no very serious inroad on her stock
of ready money.

The place was full of working people; the
men, in blouses; the women and girls, in neat
white caps or kerchiefs tied round their heads,
who were as kindly and courteous in their
demeanour as, in the course of many years'
wandering up and down the earth, I have generally
found working people to be:—in every country
save one. That one is not England; but they
speak the English language in that one. Lily's
opposite neighbours passed the bonjour to her,
and helped her to the milk and the sugar without
her having to ask for those articles; and one
comely little grisette even offered her a share of
the poached eggs she had ordered. A gentleman
who sat opposite to her, who apparently
belonged to the baking trade—who wore a
monstrous-brimmed felt hat like an umbrella of which
the handle had impaled him and the cupola
flattened on his head, and who was powdered
from head to foot with flour profusely, but was
beautifully clean to look at—reached over to
Lily when he had finished his repast, and
handed her a copy of that day's Gazette des
Tribunaux.

"It does not belong to the establishment,