"Excuse me, Bunny, but when did I ever employ you to give advice?" demanded Henriette. "It is quite evident that you don't understand me. Do you suppose for an instant that I am robbing these people here in Newport merely for the vulgar purpose of acquiring money? If you do you have a woful misconception of the purposes which actuate an artist." "You certainly are an artist, Henriette," I answered, desirous of placating her. "Then you should know better than to intimate that I am in this business for the sordid dollars and cents there are to be got out of it," pouted my mistress. "Mr. Vauxhall Bean doesn't chase the aniseseed bag because he loves to shed the aniseseed or hungers for bags as an article of food. He does it for the excitement of the hunt; because he loves to feel the movement of the hunter that he sits so well between his knees; because he is enamoured of the baying of the hounds, the winding of the horn, and welcomes the element of personal danger that enters into the sport when he and his charger have to take an unusual fence or an extra broad watercourse. So with me. In separating these people here from their money and their jewels, it is not the money and the jewels that I care for so much as the delicious risks I incur in getting them. What the high fence is to the hunter, the barriers separating me from Mrs. Gaster's jewel-case are to me; what the watchful farmer armed with a shot-gun for the protection of his crops is to the master of the hounds, the police are to me. The game of circumventing the latter and surmounting the former are the joy of my life, and while my eyes flash and sparkle with appetite every time I see a necklace or a tiara or a roll of hundred-dollar bills in the course of my social duties, it is not avarice that makes them glitter, but the call to action which they sound." I felt like saying that if that were the case I should esteem it a privilege to be made permanent custodian of the balance in hand, but it was quite evident from Henriette's manner that she was in no mood for badinage, so I held my peace. "To prove to you that I am not out for the money, Bunny, I'll give you a check this morning for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars to pay you for those steel bonds you picked up on the train when you came up here from New York. That's two-and-a-half times what they are worth," said Henriette. "Is it a bargain?" "Certainly, ma'am," I replied, delighted with the proposition. "But what are you going to do with the bonds?" "Borrow a million and a half on 'em," said Henriette. "What!" I cried. "A million and a half on a hundred thousand security?"