Jordan made
preposterous charges for candles, and she paid them
without question. She tipped people who did little services
for her with a kind of royal delicacy; the girl who
scrubbed the landings worshipped her, and the boy who
came every day for her copy once brought her a resplendent
"button-hole" consisting of two pink rosebuds and a
scarlet geranium, tendering it with a shy lie to the
effect that he had found it in the street. She went alone
now and again to the opera, taking an obscure place, and
she lived a good deal among the foreign art exhibitions
of Bond Street. Once she bought an etching and brought
it home under her arm. That kept her poor for a month,
though she would have been less aware of it if she had
not, before the month was out, wanted to buy another. A
great Parisian actress had made her yearly visit to London
in June, and Elfrida conjuring with the name of the
_Illustrated Age_, won an appointment from her. The
artiste staid only a fortnight--she declared that one
half of an English audience came to see her because it
was proper and the other because it was sinful, and she
found it insupportable--and in that time she asked Elfrida
three times to pay her morning visits, when she appeared
in her dressing-gown, little unconventional visits "_pour
bavarder_.
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