"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour into my life!" "Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly. "That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can play billiards on his own back!" "Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant, but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They say he runs it? He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did women, but I was born too late for that. When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes. At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs. Ptomaine. "I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!" "What does she do?" I asked.