One morning James rode away over the hills and neglected to come back. His wife never again heard of him. And at his exit from the scene, the storm broke; a storm of resentment that swept Betty James out beyond even the uttermost fringe of Anglo-Indian society. She hunted up her generous old step-father, Craigie, and induced him to give her a check for a thousand pounds, to get rid of her forever. She realized another thousand on her votive offerings of jewelry; and, with this capital, she took the dust of India from her pretty slippers. Here ends Lord Ranelagh's scurrilous narrative, told at Almack's. On her way back to England, Betty broke her journey at Spain, remaining there long enough to acquire three valuable assets--a Spanish accent, a semi-tolerable knowledge of Spanish dancing, and the ultra-Spanish name of Lola Montez, by which--through mere courtesy to her wishes--let us hereafter call her. Then she burst upon the British public--only to retire amid a salvo of hisses and catcalls. With the premature fall of the curtain at Her Majesty's Theater, begins the Odyssey of Lola Montez. She went from London to Germany, where she danced for a time, to but scant applause, at second-rate theaters, and at last could get no more engagements. Thence she drifted to Brussels, where, according to her own later statement, she was "reduced to singing in the streets to keep from starving." Contemporary malice gives a less creditable version of her means of livelihood in the Belgian capital. It was a period of her life--the black hour before the garish dawn--of which she never afterward would talk. But before long she was on the stage again; this time at Warsaw, during a revolution. She danced badly and was hissed. But the experience gave her an idea. She went straightway to Paris, where, by posing as an exiled Polish patriot, she secured an engagement at the Porte St. Martin Theater. It was her last hope. The "Polish patriot" story brought a goodly crowd to Lola's first performance in Paris. But, after a single dance, she heard the horribly familiar sound of hisses. And at the first hiss, her Irish spirit blazed into a crazy rage; a rage that was the turning point of her career. Glaring first at the spectators like an angry cat, Lola next glared around the stage for a weapon wherewith to wreak her fury upon them. But the stage was bare. Frantic, she kicked off her slippers, and then tore loose her heavy-buckled garters. With these intimate missiles she proceeded to pelt the grinning occupants of the front row, accompanying the volley with a high-pitched, venomous Billingsgate tirade in three languages. That was enough. On the instant the hisses were drowned in a salvo of applause that shook the rafters, Lola Montez had "arrived." Paris grabbed her to its big, childish, fickle heart.