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handsome young Englishman. Lady Hortense, however, was not aware of this. She did not glance upward into his face as she spoke; had she done so she might have seen a threatening basilisk lurking there. She took his arm and they led the way to the ball room as the initiatory measures of the march floated in to them.

As they threaded their way through the laughing, fluttering, expectant crowd, she caught a glimpse of Thayer Volney, as he bent over her lovely young friend Alice, in what seemed to her to be the devotion of a lover.

What was there in the sight that made her lift her hand with a sudden spasmodic movement to her heart as though it had burst one of its fibres and were bleeding?

CHAPTER XV

THE BREAKERS THREATEN

And love?

What was love then?

not calm, scarcely kind
But in oue all intensest emotions combined:
Life and death: pain and rapture.

"WHO

"Lucile"-Owen Meredith.

THO is the pretty girl in white with whom your nephew has just danced, Mrs. Elwood?" questioned a young brunette, resplendent in maize crepe, a little later in the evening. The speaker was by birth a creole who, seven years previous to the opening of our story, had been brought to America by one Mr Rossmore, an Englishman of vast wealth, who had claimed the beautiful Dorian de Joulés as his adopted ward and two years later had married her.

Although their advent to the New England metropolis had been unattended by testimonial bearings of any kind, by subtle ingenuité Mrs. Rossmore had succeeded in gaining for herself and husband a passport into the elite circles of the "Hub," and ere she had moved therein half a season she had attained to an acknowledged belleship, at which throne men worshipped and women bowed in smiling patronage.

The fashionable world followed in the footsteps of Dorian Rossmore. Her rare elegance of person, combined with a perfect propriety of conduct, and the fact that she was fast anchored upon the sea of matrimony made her a considered model which mothers established before their daughters, and they accepted without fear of finding in her an object of rivalry in affaires d'amour.

But her husband! Every one marvelled how so peerless a creature as Dorian could have linked her fate with a man so distressingly ugly!

In stature Mr. Rossmore was low, almost to dwarfishness. He had little blue beads for eyes; he had straw-colored hair, and beard and eyebrows; he had a florid complexion shot with pitmarks, and two rows of little sharp teeth like those of a hyena, and large ears. Oh, Martin Rossmore was "distressingly ugly!"

But Dorian seemed to dote on him, and he followed her every where like a devoted spaniel, and was content to sit in a corner of the ball-room dozing, with his chin resting upon his be-diamonded chest, and a letter A formed of his forefingers and thumbs, whilst she waltzed to her heart's satisfaction. Content to sit at dinner next to her bare and gleaming shoulders, sipping his champagne or claret, and admiringly listening to her brilliant repartee as she conversed with Major McCaulif, or Percy Delnorte, or young Fred Bentwell, who was just fresh from Yale and who lived.

in a state of spiritual ecstasy if she smiled once upon him during an evening, or gave him a glance of approval from her gazelle-like Eastern eyes.

But there came a time when no more the form of Martin Rossmore lingered near Dorian; when no more she felt protection in the name of husband.

Two years after their union the queer little man was stricken suddenly with paralysis and never rallied from the attack.

Poor Dorian, beautiful, young, talented, wealthy Dorian-was left stranded alone upon the isle of widowhood!

For some months she buried herself from the world entirely as though it had never known her. Then, at intervals, just a glimpse was to be had of her face, which shone like a languishing flower behind the sweeping drapery of sable which always enshrouded it. Thus a year of her bereavement passed, after which period Dorian reluctantly persuaded herself that grief was undermining her health and she must abandon the burden of the black veil and her cloistral apartments, which were filled with memories of her dear departed, and once more seek the sunshine of the world.

So over the threshold of the great arena she again made her way, timidly at first, so timidly, indeed, that fathers of daughters, and sons, the chosen of ambitious mothers, came forward in sympathy to offer her protection and courtesy.

She was more splendidly beautiful than ever in her new advent; and gradually it came to pass that women, seeing her in all the charms of eli gibility, began to look upon her with eyes of jealousy and secret malevolence. Her manner, at first half shy and reserved, soon became gay and vivacious, as of old. Her repartee flished with the wit and spirit inherited from her native country. Her hair was black as Erebus. Her eyes were limpid and dark as those of a gazelle and bright as African diamonds. Her skin was transparent and soft as damask. Men had always known this, but women had overlooked the full value of her charms, because of yore they gave no hint of rivalry; she was married. But this splendid creature who had stepped from widow's weeds and dull jet into maize crepe and diamonds, who revealed eburnean shoulders and arms so daringly, who flashed the dark brilliance of her eyes into men's faces so boldly, who sang so divinely, and threw open her mouth so wide when she laughed that the white soundness and evenness of her teeth and contrasting pink of her gums might be fully appreciated-oh, they hated her! and Dorian, divining their jealous enmity, was sorely pleased and did cry out in very exultation: "Such joy ambition finds!"

But to return to the question with which this chapter opened :

"Who is the pretty girl in white, with whom

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