together with certain pots full of colour, and
bits of lace and tinsel. A faint odour of warm
wax, even more sickening than that of the stew
in the old woman's pipkin pervaded the hovel.

There came from an inner room a woman
with her hair hanging over her shoulders—a
half-washed face, for fantastic streaks of paint
were still visible on her cheeks and forehead,
and an old petticoat and shawl hastily thrown
over a theatrical tunic and fleshings. Her
spangled sandals were plainly visible beneath
her dress. She held in one hand a flaring
tallow candle, and in the other a glass of some
liquor.

She knelt down by the side of the still half-
fainting girl, and held the glass to her lips.

"Drink!" she said, in English, "drink! this
instant. It will do you good. Drink! or I'll
strangle you."

Lily could not but obey. The strangely
accoutred woman looked so fierce, and spoke so
sternly. She swallowed a mouthful of the
liquid, which was nauseous to her palate and
scorching to her throat, and was, indeed, brandy
mingled with water. After a short time she felt
better, though dizzy.

"And so l have found you at last, little
runaway," the woman went on. "I could have
sworn it was you in the booth. I knew those
hypocritical little eyes of yours at once. Ah!
I have had a fine chase after you, cunning little
fox as you are. Where have you been all these
years, you crocodile? Come, confess. Let me
know all about it. Speak, or I'll beat you."

Nervous and shattered as she was, Lily
could at first give scarcely a coherent reply to
the questions with which the strange woman
well-nigh overwhelmed her. Though she had a
vague and alarmed dread of whom she might be,
she was not prepared at first to admit her right
to interrogate her. In fact, she could only
tremble and palpitate like a little bird fresh
caught in the hand of a strong cruel boy.

The woman made her drink more of the
liquid. Lily pleaded that it nearly choked her,
and burnt her, but she would take no denial.
Although it seemed to set her brain on fire, she
really felt stronger for it, and, after a time,
could talk. The woman led her on, not
unadroitly, by asking her if she remembered Miss
Bunnycastle's school at Stockwell, the dinner at
Greenwich, the steam-boat, the journey to Paris,
the Pension Marcassin. Yes: Lily remembered
all these. What next? the woman asked
threateningly. Well, she told all she knew
of her residence with Madame de Kergolay:
all save her love for Edgar Greyfaunt.

Why had she left the roof of the lady who had
been so kind to her? Lily experienced much
difficulty in explaining that part of the matter.
She could not lie; and yet she dared not avow
the hard and bitter truth. The woman would
not believe that she had found herself in the
Champs Elysées by accident. She had run away,
she said: of that she was certain. Lily, blushing
and sobbing, was constrained to admit her flight.
Why had she fled? The woman asked her
again and again, in tones which each time
became more menacing. She raised her clenched
hand at last, and might have brought it down
heavily (for she had been partaking freely of
the stimulant which she had forced Lily to sip);
but the Italian muttered something from his
stool, and she desisted. The girl sought to
pacify her. She tried to explain. She confessed
that she had been ungrateful to her benefactress,
that she had lost her affection, and that she saw
nothing before her but sudden flight.

"Ungrateful! I can well believe that. To
whom hast thou not been ungrateful, little
spawn of evil? From youth upwards it has
always been the same story—ingratitude,
ingratitude!"

Surely she, the Wild Woman, had done a
great deal in her time to earn the poor child's
gratitude!"

"There is some man at the bottom of this,"
she said at last, rising as if wearied with further
cross-questioning. "Thou art just the age to
make a fool of thyself for a dandy face and a
pair of blonde whiskers. Never mind, little one;
we will wait. Sooner or later, by fair means or
by foul, we will have thy secret out of thee."

She let her be at last, and the girl sank into
a long deep slumber. Waking towards morning,
Lily turned on her sorry pallet, and, half hoping
that she might never wake again, once more
sank into sleep. Excitement, fatigue, and the
liquor they had made her swallow, had been
more than opiates to her.

She was kept close prisoner in the hovel the
whole of that day and the whole of the next. The
fêtes still continued, and her tyrant was called
upon to enact, during at least sixteen hours out
of the twenty-four, the part she was so admirably
qualified to fill: that of the Wild Woman. Lily
used to look upon her in the morning with a
curiosity that was mingled with horror as she
arrayed herself for the mountebankery of the
day. It was a monstrous toilette. How soiled
and faded the fleshings were! How frayed at
the wrists and armpits! How they bulged into
ugly creases at the knees and elbows! How
splayfooted the sandals looked, how coarse and
garish the embroidery! She had no time to
pink her fleshings, but rubbed powdered
vermilion into the parts that were discoloured,
just as she rubbed it into her face. There were
patches of the latter, however, that required
orpiment, and cerese, and bismuth, and ochre,
and chrome yellow to be laid on in grotesque
streaks, and half-moons, and dabs. Was she
not a Wild Woman of the Prairies? Before
she daubed on her war-paint she would anoint
her face and hands with a tallow candle.

"No cold cream for me now, little angel,"
she would say, with a horrible leer, to the
wondering girl. "Watch well what I am doing. It
will soon be thy turn to assist me to dress, and
woe betide thee if thou makest blunders.
Observe, the candle first; the tallow, c'est du suif,
de chez l'épicier, tout de bon. And I, who
have covered myself with pearl powder—de
vraies perles d'Orient—who have basked in