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"Have you been shot out of a cannon, Mr. Pallister?" she persisted.

Pallister turned his eyes away from hers: he didn't dare to look at Leslie too long. To him she was just a bit too bewildering. After a time his glance crept back to hers.

"Yes, Miss Wilkinson," he said nervously, "and what's more, I've got to come back directly and face the cannon's mouth again."

Leslie touched him lightly on the shoulder; a thrill passed through the young man's frame.

"Never mind," she said smilingly, "I'm going up to spike the cannon for you."

On reaching the second floor she knocked gently, but persistently, at a boudoir door.

"Oh, who is it now?" came in a petulant, nasal voice from within. "Come in, if you're coming; otherwise stay out!" And an expression of something like pain crossed the girl's face as she entered.

Sitting up in bed in a flowered-silk kimona, a lady was sipping a claret cup. Year after year, like the Wilkinson mansion, the lineaments and form of this lady had been portrayed in the press throughout the country; and long after she was entitled to any claim to comeliness, she had been heralded as one of the beauties of the universe. As a matter of fact, her delicate form—if delicate form she had ever possessed—had been wholly obliterated by a generous layer of avoirdupois—lumps wherever the lumps were the least needed.