The mote he loaded her with presents, the less able did she seem to realise that money was being spent on her account. So long had been the dearth of money in her life, that now she had no discrimination as to the value of it. However big the sum he placed in her purse, she did not hesitate to hand it out to the first beggar they met. But when he paid a flower-girl two marks for a rose she thought it wicked extravagance. Once when she had tickled his fastidious palate beyond belief by her _naivete_, he asked in sudden distrust, "I say, little woman, are you acting?" She didn't know what he meant, and with the wide melancholy eyes of childlike innocence, which she used to turn on him at such questions, she replied, "Acting indeed! Since papa went away I haven't seen any acting, or been inside a theatre once." The same day he took a box for the play, and she danced about the room with the little blue tickets in her hand, half mad with delight. But her joyous enthusiasm was somewhat damped by being told that the occasion demanded evening dress. It was incomprehensible to her that to appreciate Shakespeare's "Winter's Tale" you should be obliged to bare your neck and shoulders. The evening gowns, besides, seemed far too grand for her. In selecting one to wear, she hovered round them with their glittering, jewelled trimmings and exquisite lace as gingerly as if they were a bed of nettles. In a generous mood the colonel had ordered the gowns, for no particular reason, for to take Lilly into society as yet was not to be thought of. When she came to him dressed, stiff and stern-eyed from embarrassment, yet glowing with a feverish joy in her finery, taller and more of a budding Venus than ever, her delicate rounded breast half hidden in a mass of soft lace, the fabulously beautiful chain of pearls on her swan-like throat, the elderly robber went into such ecstasies over his booty that he was near ordering the finery back into the wardrobe, and throwing the theatre tickets into the waste-paper basket; but she implored him so fervently to keep his promise that he thought better of it and got into the carriage with her. Then, he, who imagined he had long ago outlived the commonplace vanity of delighting to show off his possessions in public, experienced a triumph. The _blase_ old bachelor found himself enjoying the sensation of being envied, and, though he accepted it disdainfully as a matter of course, he was tremendously flattered. Directly Lilly entered the box she was the cynosure of all eyes. Everyone speculated as to what the relationship could be between this extraordinarily handsome and distinguished pair, and when after the first act a thousand tongues of light leapt out again from the ceiling, opera-glasses were levelled at them, and a hubbub of questioning comment passed from mouth to mouth.