her beauty, her grace and agility were the
delight of thousands, and how she had created, in
the high school of horsemanship, a position in
which she might have many imitators, but few
compeers. A brief biography of the gifted
equestrian followed this glowing criticism. Lily
learnt, to her astonishment, that the countess
was of Spanish extraction—of a noble
Andalusian family, indeed; that her mother (in the
land of the dark mantilla and the bewitching
cachuca) was known as the Pearl of Seville;
but that reverses of fortune had forced her
papa to adopt the lowly, but still honourable,
profession of a matador. Educated in the
Terpsichorean department of the Conservatory
at Milan, the countess had been instructed in
the mysteries of the high school of horsemanship
by an Arab sheik, assisted by the Master of the
Horse to the Emperor of Austria. Her stud
comprised an Andalusian barb, an Estremaduran
jennet, a thorough-bred Arab from the Sahara,
and a Persian filly from Tiflis. She had been
married in early life to an English gentleman of
high rank and vast wealth; but the union had
not proved a happy one, and the gifted and
beauteous Madame Ernestine was now a widow.
She had gone through a series of the most
startling and romantic adventures, and had
received costly presents, mostly consisting of
diamonds, from the majority of the sovereigns
of Europe. She was eminently accomplished:
being a mistress of five languages, and a skilful
dancer, painter, and modeller of wax flowers.
In age she might be bordering on her twenty-
seventh year. Lily could not help asking
herself, when she had come to the end of this
astonishing narrative, whether it was all true;
whether the countess was indeed the wonderful
person they made her out to be; or whether
newspapers were even addicted to the practice
for which the girls at her school used to be
punished: to wit, lying.

It must have been nearly two in the morning
when the landlord, Mr. Kafooze, knocked at
her door, and asked if he might come in. The
candle had a very long wick by this time, and
Lily had laid down the imaginative newspaper,
and was nodding wearily. She started up at
the landlord's voice, and bade him enter.

Mr. Kafooze was a very little old man,
with a white smooth poll very like a billiard-
ball, and reddish eyes, and no perceptible teeth,
and a weak piping voice. He dressed habitually
in black, had a limp wisp of white kerchief
round his neck, and was, perhaps, the last man
in South Lambeth who wore knee-breeches,
slack cotton hose, and plated buckles in his
shoes. The small-clothes and buckles, added to
his baldness, were of no small service to him
among his neighbours. Parents liked to send
their children to a school of which the master
looked at once so very clerical and so very
scholastic. Mr. Kafooze's academy was on
the humblest scale. Some twenty little boys
and girls used to come there every morning
and afternoon, to all appearance tor three
purposes: to crack nuts, to munch apples,
and to pinch one another. When the last
nut was cracked, the last apple devoured,
and the last pinch-extracted squeal uttered,
school was dismissed. The pupils generally
went home black and blue, so far as their arms
were concerned, but not through any corporal
chastisement inflicted by Mr. Kafooze. That
placid old man had not so much as a halfpenny
cane in his academy. His assistant in the business
of education was his niece, a humpbacked
young person, with red hair, and a firmament of
freckles on her countenance, who revelled in
the somewhat exceptional name of Rhodope,
who passed the major portion of her time either
in endeavouring to mollify the bunions with
which she was troubled, or in relating ghost
stories (of which she had a vast stock) in an
under tone to the three senior pupils. Mr.
Kafooze sat apart at a little desk, and when the
scholars were unusually noisy, would tell them
mildly that they were "worse than bluebottles."
He was generally intent on the contemplation
of a celestial globe, and when he had (as it
seemed, being short sighted) smelt at this orb
for many minutes, he would rush away to his
desk, bury his nose in a quire of foolscap, and
cover at least two pages with blots, scrawls,
dashes, and hieroglyphical characters of strange
design. Whence arose, even among Mr.
Kafooze's most friendly critics, a rumour that he
was engaged in the discovery of the perpetual
motion, to be accomplished by means of clockwork
and balloons, and that he had, in furtherance
of his scientific ends, entered into a compact
with the Evil One. But everybody agreed that
"he knew a deal," and was exceedingly genteel
in his manners.

"It's only me, my dear," piped Mr. Kafooze,
entering the parlour with a little lamp in one
hand. With the disengaged hand, which was
so thin and shrivelled as to be well-nigh
transparent, he shaded the light from Lily.

"You watch late to-night," he resumed, in his
weak treble. "Hasn't your mamma come home
yet?"

"Madame is supping with some friends,"
Lily answered, quietly. "Madame" was a discreet
compromise into the use of which she had
been drilled by the Wild Woman. "Dare to
call me anything else, and I will skin you alive,
you viper," was her amiable warning to her
dependent.

"Ah! it's no business of mine. She's a very
good lodger, when she's in a good temper, and
has every right to her latch-key. I hope she's
enjoying herself. What a famous schoolmistress
your mamma would make? Ah! she'd
make the little ones mind, I'll warrant you.
They don't mind me a bit, nor my niece
Rhodope."

"But you, Mr. Kafooze," said Lily, who was
accustomed to the little old man, who often
came in at night for a quiet gossip, "you are
up very late, too."

"Oh! I, my dear young lady, I'm always
up late. It's my way. I've so much to do. I
sit up with the stars."