’Well, I shall go and dress.  What are you people going to do?  You needn’t expect any dinner.  I shall have mine at a restaurant.’

‘Who have you to meet?’ asked Fanny, with a grimace.

Her sister disregarded the question, yawned again, and turned to Beatrice.

’Who shall we ask to take Fan’s place on Tuesday?  Whoever it 15, they’ll have to pay.  Those seats are selling for three guineas, somebody told me.’

Conversation lingered about this point for a few minutes, till Mrs. Peachey went upstairs.  When the door was open, a child’s crying could be heard, but it excited no remark.  Presently the other two retired, to make themselves ready for going out.  Fanny was the first to reappear, and, whilst waiting for her sister, she tapped out a new music-hall melody on the piano.

As they left the house, Beatrice remarked that Ada really meant to have her dinner at Gatti’s or some such place; perhaps they had better indulge themselves in the same way.

’Suppose you give Horace Lord a hint that we’ve no dinner at home?  He might take us, and stand treat.’

Fanny shook her head.

’I don’t think he could get away.  The guv’nor expects him home to dinner on Sundays.’

The other laughed her contempt.

’You see!  What good is he?  Look here, Fan, you just wait a bit, and you’ll do much better than that.  Old Lord would cut up rough as soon as ever such a thing was mentioned; I know he would.  There’s something I have had in my mind for a long time.  Suppose I could show you a way of making a heap of money—­no end of money—?  Shouldn’t you like it better,—­to live as you pleased, and be independent?’

The listener’s face confessed curiosity, yet was dubious.

‘What do you say to going into business with me?’ pursued Miss French.  ’We’ve only to raise a little money on the houses, and m a year or two we might be making thousands.’

‘Business?  What sort of business?’

’Suppose somebody came to you and said:  Pay me a sovereign, and I’ll make you a member of an association that supplies fashionable clothing at about half the ordinary price,—­wouldn’t you jump at it?’

‘If I thought it wasn’t a swindle,’ Fanny replied ingenuously.

’Of course.  But you’d be made to see it wasn’t.  And suppose they went on to say:  Take a ten-pound share, and you shall have a big interest on it, as well as your dresses for next to nothing.  How would you like that?’

‘Can it be done?’

’I’ve got a notion it can, and I think I know two or three people who would help to set the thing going.  But we must have some capital to show.  Have you the pluck to join in?’

‘And suppose I lose my money?’