“You are always so prompt,” remarked Gabriella cheerfully, as she arranged the hats in the front room.  Her rule of business conduct was simple, and consisted chiefly of the precept that whatever happened she must keep her temper.  Never once, never even in Madame’s most trying moments, had she permitted herself to appear angry, and her strict adherence to this resolution had established her in an enviable position of authority.  Obeying unconsciously some inherited strain of prudence in her nature, she had sacrificed her temper on the solid altar of business expediency.

“Somebody has to be on time, I guess,” replied Miss Smith snappishly.  “I’d like to know who would be here if I wasn’t?”

She was a thin, soured, ugly little woman, with an extraordinary capacity for work, and an excess of nervous vitality bordering on hysteria.  Gabriella, who knew something of her story, was aware of the self-sacrificing goodness of her private life, and secure in her own unclouded cheerfulness, could afford to smile tolerantly at the waspish sting.

“It’s a pity we can’t get more system here,” she observed, for Miss Smith, she knew, was no tale-bearer.  “The waste of time and misdirected energy are appalling.  The business would be worth three times as much to anybody who could give her whole attention to it, but, as Madame is forever telling us, her health keeps her from really overlooking things.”

“I wonder why she doesn’t sell out?” asked Miss Smith, suddenly good-humoured and interested.  “There’s a lot in it for the right person, and it isn’t in nature that she can hold on much longer.  If I could find the money, I’d buy it and cut down expenses until I made a big profit.  It would be easy enough.”  Then she added, while she slammed the ivory-tinted door of a case:  “I wish you could run the house, Mrs. Carr.  You are so pleasant to work with.  Nothing ever seems to depress you.”

“It would be nice, wouldn’t it?” responded Gabriella promptly, and as she said the words, she decided that she would try to borrow the money from Judge Crowborough.  For three months she had been struggling to bring herself to the point of asking his help—­or at least his advice—­and now, in a flash, without argument or discussion, she had settled the question.  “It’s a simple business proposition—­a promising investment,” she thought.  “I’ll ask him to get the money for me at a fair interest—­to get me enough anyhow to give me control of the business.  The worst he can do is to refuse,” she concluded, with a kind of forlorn optimism; “at least he can’t kill me.”

Making a hurried excuse, she went back to the telephone, and calling up the judge, asked for an appointment in his office at five o’clock.  From his surprised response she inferred his curiosity, and from his hearty acquiescence, she gathered that his surprise was not an unpleasant one.  “At five o’clock, then.  It is so good of you.  There is a little matter of business.  Yes, I know how kind you are, and of course your advice is invaluable.  I can’t think of anybody else on earth I can ask.  Oh, thank you.  Yes, at five o’clock.  I shan’t be late and I promise to keep you but a minute.  Good-bye.  What?  Oh, yes, I’ll come straight from Dinard’s.”