“C. Q.” or, In the Wireless House
No one could possibly dodge this obvious fact. Lily Trevelyan was one of those international beauties who, like the Countess of Warwick, appear on the front pages of the morning dailies whenever there is a dearth of legitimate news. Born in a manufacturing town in eastern Massachusetts, she had escaped from it at an early age, and, with another girl, had taken up the study of art in Paris. Then for about five years she utterly disappeared, only to blossom forth suddenly in London as a dashing society favorite, a bit flamboyant for some of the more conservative, but one who patently had attracted the discriminating eye of royalty. From that time on, Lily Leslie had been the rage. Dukes named horses after her and their jockeys wore her colors; her photographs appeared in the shop windows; cigars were branded and banded in her honor; and she was followed from one European watering-place to another by a kitchen cabinet of Austrian, French, and English aristocrats and millionaires.
All this but six years after her departure from Nesmith Street, Lowell! Yet, such things happen more often than is suspected.43
