“Carlotta,” said I, “the first thing you have to learn here is that books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta.  If you pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have you hanged.”

This checked her sumptuary excitement.  It gave her food for reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of clothes.

“In fact,” I concluded, “you will be dressed like a lady.”  She opened the book at a gaudy picture, “France, XVI(ieme) Siecle—­Saltimbanque et Bohemmienne,” and pointed to the female mountebank.  This young person wore a bright green tunic, bordered with gold and finished off at the elbows and waist with red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the sleeves of which reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white carnations stuck in ivy.

“I will get a dress like that,” said Carlotta.

I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and I trembled.  I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the undesirability of such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but with tastes there is no disputing, and I saw that she was but half-convinced.  She will require training in aesthetics.

She is very submissive.  I said, “Run away now to Antoinette,” and she went with the cheerfulness of a child.  I must rig up a sitting-room for her, as I cannot have her in here.  Also for the present she must take her meals in her own apartments.  I cannot shock the admirable Stenson by sitting down at table with her in that improper peignoir.  Besides, as Antoinette informs me, the poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after the fashion of the East.  I know what that is, having once been present at an Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, and pulled reeking lumps of flesh out of the leg of mutton.  Ugh!  But as she has probably not sat down to a meal with a man in her life, her banishment from my table will not hurt her feelings.  She must, however, be trained in Christian table-manners, as well as in aesthetics; also in a great many other things.

Mrs. McMurray arrived with a tape-measure, a pencil, and a notebook.

“First,” she announced, “I will measure her all over.  Then I will go out and procure her a set of out-door garments, and tomorrow we will spend the whole livelong day in the shops.  Do you mind if I use part of the 100 for the hire of a private brougham?”

“Have a coach and six, my dear Mrs. McMurray,” I said.  “It will doubtless please Carlotta better.”

I summoned Carlotta and performed the ceremony of introduction.  To my surprise she was perfectly at her ease and with the greatest courtesy of manner invited the visitor to accompany her to her own apartments.

When Mrs. McMurray returned to the drawing-room she wore an expression that can only be described as indescribable.

“What, my dear Sir Marcus, do you think is to be the ultimate destiny of that young person?”