Mrs. Belswin, so she called herself; but she looked more like a savage queen than a civilised woman. She should have been decked with coloured beads, with fantastic feathers, with barbaric bracelets, with strangely striped skins, as it was she was an anomaly, an incongruity, in the poor room of poor lodging-house, staring at her fierce face in the dingy mirror. Mrs. Munser, who kept the establishment, acknowledged to her intimate friend, Mrs. Pegs, that the sight of this lady had given her a turn; and certainly no one could blame cockney Mrs. Munser, for of all the strange people that might be seen in London, this lithe, savage-looking woman was surely the strangest. Indian jungles, African forests, South American pampas, she would have been at home there, having all the appearance and fire of a woman of the tropics; but to see her in dull, smoky London--it was extraordinary. After scrutinising herself for a time, she began to talk aloud in a rich full voice, which was broken every now and then by a guttural note which betrayed the savage; yet she chose her words well, she spoke easily, and rolled her words in a soft labial manner suggestive of the Italian language. Yet she was not an Italian. "Twenty years ago," she muttered savagely, "nearly twenty years ago, and I have hardly ever seen her. I must do so now, when Providence has put this chance into my hands. They can't keep a mother from her child. God's laws are stronger than those of man. Rupert would put the ocean between us if he could, but now he's in New Zealand, so for a time I will be able to see her, to speak to her, to hold her in my arms; not as her mother,--no, not as her mother,--but as her paid servant." She turned away from the mirror with a savage gesture, and walked slowly up and down the room with the soft sinuous movement of a panther. Her soft silk dress rustled as she walked, and her splendid hair, released by her sudden movement, fell like a black veil over her shoulders. She thrust the tresses back from her temples with impatient hands, and her face looked forth from the cloud of hair, dark, sombre, and savage, with a flash of the fierce eyes and vicious click of the strong white teeth. "Curses on the man who took me away from her. I did not care for him, with his yellow hair and pink face. Why did I go? Why was I such a fool? I left her, my own child, for him, and went out into the world an outcast, for his sake. God! God! Why are women such fools?" For a moment she stood with uplifted hands, as if awaiting an answer; but none came, so, letting her arms fall, she walked back to her chair, and lighting a cigarette, placed it in her mouth. "I daren't use a pipe here," she said, with a discordant laugh, "it would not be respectable. But Spanish women smoke cigarettes, Russian women smoke cigarettes, so why should not the Maori woman smoke them also. Respectable, eh! Well, I'm going to be respectable now, when I've answered this."