’Not for you, Lady Kirkbank, with your fine shoulders.  Shoulders are of no age—­les epaules sont la vraie fontaine de jouvence pour les jolies femmes.’

’You are such a witty creature, Seraphine, Fifine.  You ought to be a descendant of that wicked old Madame du Deffand.  Rilboche, give Madame some more chartreuse.’

And Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker would chink their liqueur glasses in amity before the lady gathered up her satin train and allowed her peerless shoulders to be muffled in a plush mantle to go down to her carriage, fortified by that last glass of green chartreuse.

There were always the finest chartreuse and curacoa in a liqueur cabinet on Lady Kirkbank’s dressing-table.  The cabinet formed a companion to the dressing-case, which contained all those creamy and rose-hued cosmetics, powders, brushes, and medicaments, which were necessary for the manufacture of Georgie’s complexion.  The third bottle in the liqueur case held cognac, and this, as Rilboche the maid knew, was oftenest replenished.  Yet nobody could accuse Lady Kirkbank of intemperate habits.  The liqueur box only supplied the peg that was occasionally wanted to screw the superior mind to concert pitch.

’One must always be at concert pitch in society, don’t you know, my dear,’ said Georgie to her young protegee.

Thus it happened that, Miss Kearney having behaved badly, Lesbia was carried off to dear old Seraphine, and delivered over to that modern witch, as a sacrifice tied to the horns of the altar.

Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses—­genuine Queen Anne, be it understood—­between Piccadilly and St. James’s Palace, and hardly five minutes’ walk from Arlington Street.  It is a quiet little cul de sac in the very heart of the fashionable world; and here of an afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine’s customers, blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.

Madame Seraphine’s house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall old-fashioned windows curtained with amber satin.  It was a small, dark house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer:  but the staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine Louis Seize.

Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house—­a wizened little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher than the other, dressed in a shiny black moire gown, years after moires had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black hair—­raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.

One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing, and that was an old-fashioned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds, brilliants of the first water.  This ring she called her yard measure; and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her inspection.  For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.