The "Hawley boy" did as he was told because he believes in Mrs. Hauksbee. He was the instrument in the hand of a Higher Power, and he wore _jharun_ coats, like "the scoriac rivers that roll their sulphurous torrents down Yahek, in the realms of the Boreal Pole," that made your temples throb when seen early in the morning. I will introduce him to you some day if all goes well. He is worth knowing. Unpleasant things have already been written about Mrs. Reiver in other places. She was a person without invention. She used to get her ideas from the men she captured, and this led to some eccentric changes of character. For a month or two she would act _à la_ Madonna, and try Theo for a change if she fancied Theo's ways suited her beauty. Then she would attempt the dark and fiery Lilith, and so and so on, exactly as she had absorbed the new notion. But there was always Mrs. Reiver--hard, selfish, stupid Mrs. Reiver--at the back of each transformation. Mrs. Hauksbee christened her the Magic Lantern on account of this borrowed mutability. "It just depends upon the slide," said Mrs. Hauksbee. "The case is the only permanent thing in the exhibition. But that, thank Heaven, is getting old." There was a Fancy Ball at Government House and Mrs. Reiver came attired in some sort of '98 costume, with her hair pulled up to the top of her head, showing the clear outline on the back of the neck like the Récamier engravings. Mrs. Hauksbee had chosen to be loud, not to say vulgar, that evening, and went as The Black Death--a curious arrangement of barred velvet, black domino and flame-coloured satin puffery coming up to the neck and the wrists, with one of those shrieking keel-backed cicalas in the hair. The scream of the creature made people jump. It sounded so unearthly in a ballroom. I heard her say to some one: "Let me introduce you to Madame Récamier," and I saw a man dressed as Autolycus bowing to Mrs. Reiver, while The Black Death looked more than usually saintly. It was a very pleasant evening, and Autolycus and Madame Récamier--I heard her ask Autolycus who Madame Récamier was, by the way--danced together ever so much. Mrs. Hauksbee was in a meditative mood, but she laughed once or twice in the back of her throat, and that meant trouble.