Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine," in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more "dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?" and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink toast-and-water in her house any more. "There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it," she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?' But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll get him to give her a new carpet!" I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having nothing marketable about her, not even a title. If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of Frederick Cook, perhaps? She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to change it for another and a nicer. CHAPTER X