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10 "Just Lady Jane, ma'am? No one else?"

"No one else," said the other, and preceded Julia down the two flights of stairs to the charming little apartment on the third floor. "She is a dear girl, and I enjoy having her all to myself once in a while."

"She is so, ma'am," agreed Julia, and added. "The oftener the better."

At half-past seven Julia ran down the stairs to open the gate at the bottom. She admitted a slender young woman, who said, "Thank you," and "Good evening, Julia," in the softest, loveliest voice imaginable, and hurried up, past the apartment of the Marchioness, to the fourth floor. Julia, in cap and apron, wore a pleased smile as she went in to put the finishing touches on the coiffure of her mistress.

"Pity there isn't more like her," she said, at the end of five minutes' reflection. Patting the silvery crown of the Marchioness, she observed in a less detached manner: "As I always says, the wonderful part is that it's all your own, ma'am."

"I am beginning to dread the stairs as much as any one," said the Marchioness, as she passed out into the hall and looked up the dimly lighted steps. "That is a bad sign, Julia."

A mass of coals crackled in the big fireplace on the top floor, and a tall man in the resplendent livery of a footman was engaged in poking them up when the Marchioness entered.

"Bitterly cold, isn't it, Moody?" inquired she, approaching with stately tread, her lorgnon lifted.

"It is, my lady,—extremely nawsty," replied Moody. "The trams are a bit off, or I should 'ave