Well, 27 Terrisina Road should not get him or keep him without a struggle; it should be war to the knife. Doubtless this was a little soft-eyed creature young enough to be Regina's child. But Regina would be soft-eyed, Regina would rejuvenate herself, Regina would win all along the line. It was in this spirit that Regina went upstairs and examined her wardrobe. She would leave the house to take care of itself, merely throwing out a few hints as to dinner, and betake herself to town in order to consult the specialists whom she had had in her mind during the last month. She picked out the smartest of the frocks which she had not taken away with her, and, casting off her white cambric wrapper in which she had breakfasted, she began to dress herself with feverishly eager fingers. Alack and alas! The effect of careering through the fresh country air, tinged as it was with the brine of the ocean, had been to make Regina thoroughly enjoy the lunches by the wayside, and the more elaborate dinners of the evening hour. We all know the effect of good French soup, various kinds of omelettes, in short, of excellent bourgeois cooking, and this effect had stolen upon Regina like a thief in the night, and neither by coaxing nor force could she get herself into the garment in which she desired to travel to town. "Good heavens!" she exclaimed in a tone of anxiety, "I must have put on stones while I have been away. The old proverb says 'Laugh and grow fat,' and I take it that laughter and happiness have the same effect if one has a tendency that way. What shall I do?" There was only one thing to be done, and that was to get into one of the despised and discarded gowns in which she had loomed large and important on the French horizon, and take herself in quest of new ones as quickly as possible. Then she remembered that she had sent a little message on the wings of unanimity, a little message which had been signed, "Your broken-hearted Miranda." Surely by now there would be a reply to it. She finished her toilette, hiding as much of her gown as she could by the addition of a large lace cape which she had bought as a bargain in the little French town where she had been so happy, and then she went downstairs and sought for the back numbers of the ladies' periodical to which she had written. They were in their accustomed place, the four numbers which she had not yet seen. She began with the last. "Faded Iras," "White Heather," "White Rose," "Pussy Cat," were the first words which met her eyes. There was no "Broken-hearted Miranda," and she went on to the next number, and there, at the top of the column, was the name she was seeking.