"I am a soldier, Miss--eh--Lorraine, and therefore accustomed to come to the point without any sort of circumlocution. I will therefore at once put to you the question for which I have solicited the favour of this interview. How much do you require to leave this house at once; to release Sir Frank Pickard from his engagement to marry you, and for the surrender of the written undertaking which you extracted from him yesterday?" Some ladies would have resented both the form in which the inquiry was couched, and the manner in which it was put. The General thought it extremely possible that, in this case, resentment might take a shape which was at once active and unpleasant. He was mistaken. The lady, as soon as the inquiry was addressed to her, answered, with the most matter-of-fact air in the world,-- "Five thousand pounds." The General stared. He was genuinely taken aback by the magnitude of the demand, and by the prompt calmness with which it was made. "Five thousand pounds! Monstrous! Do you take Sir Frank Pickard for a fool?" The lady smiled. "I don't think, General, that, if I were you, I should ask too many questions like that--it might be awkward for everyone concerned. The sum I have named is my lowest figure; my very lowest. As I believe the lawyers put it, it is named without prejudice. Unless I receive a cheque for that amount during the next fifteen minutes by that clock on the shelf, the figure will be raised. And as, also, if I am to remain for dinner there is not much time for me to put on my other frock--a startler, General, I give you my word!--I shall be obliged if you will not keep me a moment longer than you can help." The General stared still more. It burst on him, with the force of an electric shock, that his young friend had placed himself in a very peculiar position indeed. Some remarks, in good, plain Saxon, were exchanged. As a result, the General interviewed his principal. After a period of time, which probably did not much exceed the fifteen minutes she had named, the lady quitted the house she had so recently entered as an invited guest, with her brown-paper parcels, and her cardboard bonnet-box, but without that sheet of paper on which Sir Frank Pickard had placed a formal undertaking to make her his wife. That same night when, at last, Joe Lamb was enabled, by the closing of his master's shop, to get out into the streets to obtain what, comparatively speaking, was a mouthful of fresh air, he received a boisterous salute from a female in gorgeous and fantastic attire. "Hullo, Joey! How goes it, my gay young pippin?" He showed signs of objecting both to the address, and the person from whom it came. "Don't holler at me like that; who are you? Why--if it isn't Peggy! What's the meaning of this Guy Fawkes show?" "Crummy, isn't it? It's earned me that." She held out in front of him a slip of paper. He took it in his fingers.