“There’s a rare lot as would like to be in my place,” murmured Carthew with bland superiority.  “If it’s all the same to you, sir, I’ll just go and give her a look over before we start again.”  He scraped his chair cruelly over the wood floor, rose, and ceased to be an authority on women.

It was while exercising his privilege of demanding, awaiting, and paying the bill, that Mr. Prohack happened to see, at the other end of the long, empty dining-room table, a copy of The Sunday Picture, which was the Sabbath edition of The Daily Picture.  He got up and seized it, expecting it to be at least a week old.  It proved, however, to be as new and fresh as it could be.  Mr. Prohack glanced with inimical tolerance at its pages, until his eye encountered the portraits of two ladies, both known to him, side by side.  One was Miss Eliza Fiddle, the rage of the West End, and the other was Mrs. Arthur Prohack, wife of the well-known Treasury official.  The portraits were juxtaposed, it seemed, because Miss Eliza Fiddle had just let her lovely home in Manchester Square to Mrs. Arthur Prohack.

The shock of meeting Eve in The Sunday Picture was terrible, but equally terrible to Mr. Prohack was the discovery of his ignorance in regard to the ownership of the noble mansion.  He had understood—­or more correctly he had been given to understand—­that the house and its contents belonged to a certain peer, whose taste in the arts was as celebrated as that of his lordly forefathers had been.  Assuredly neither Eliza Fiddle nor anybody like her could have been responsible for the exquisite decorations and furnishings of that house.  On the other hand, it would have been very characteristic of Eliza Fiddle to leave the house as carelessly as it had been left, with valuable or invaluable bibelots lying about all over the place.  Almost certainly Eliza Fiddle must have had some sort of effective ownership of the place.  He knew that dazzling public favourites did sometimes enjoy astounding and mysterious luck in the matter of luxurious homes, and that some of them progressed through a series of such homes, each more inexplicable than the last.  He would not pursue the enquiry, even in his own mind.  He had of course no grudge against the efficient and strenuous Eliza, for he was perfectly at liberty not to pay money in order to see her.  She must be an exceedingly clever woman; and it was not in him to cast stones.  Yet, Pharisaical snob, he did most violently resent that she should be opposite his wife in The Sunday Picture.... Eve!  Eve!  A few short weeks ago, and you made a mock of women who let themselves get into The Daily Picture.  And now you are there yourself! (But so, and often, was the siren Lady Massulam!  A ticklish thing, criticism of life!)

And there was another point, as sharp as any.  Ozzie Morfey must have known, Charlie must have known, Sissie must have known, Eve herself must have known, that the de facto owner of the noble mansion was Eliza Fiddle.  And none had vouchsafed the truth to him.