give her the chance. But I never do!"

Miss Rakestraw, I should explain, was an enterprising young lady journalist, who contributed society news and "on dits" to the leading Islington and Holloway journals, and was understood to have had "leaderettes" and "turnovers" accepted by periodicals of even greater importance.

"If only," Lurana burst out on one of these occasions, "if only I could do something[Pg 17] once which would get my name into all the papers, set everybody thinking of me, talking of me, staring after me wherever I went, make editors write for my photograph, and interviewers beg for my biography, I think I should be content."

[Pg 17]

I made the remark, which was true but not perhaps startling in its originality, that fame of this kind was apt to be of brief duration.

"What should I care?" she cried; "I should have had it. I could keep the cuttings; they would always be there to remind me that once at least—but what's the use of talking? I shall never see my name in all the papers. I know I shan't!"

"There is a way!" I ventured to observe; "you might have your name in all the papers, if you married."

"As if I meant that!" she said, with a deliciously contemptuous pout. "And whom should I marry, if you please, Mr Blenkinsop?"

[Pg 18]

[Pg 18]

"You might marry me!" I suggested humbly.

"And whom should I marry, Mr Blenkinsop?"

"You!" she retorted. "How would that make me a celebrity. You are not even one yourself."

"I do not care to boast," I said, "but it is the simple fact that nobody in the entire tea-trade has a palate approaching mine for keenness and delicacy. Ask any one and they will tell you the same."

"You may be the best tea-taster in the world," she said, "but the purity of your palate will never gain you a paragraph in a single society paper. And even if it[Pg 19] did, what should I gain? At the best a reflected glory. 

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