pride would not let her rebel against. Then he said, still keeping his eyes upon her, with some of their recent amusement still in them:

"Don't you know, my dear, a-you please me amazingly to-night; a-you affect inanimate colors so much that one is apt to come to regard you almost as a statue, or a vestal virgin; but to-night- a-you are as brilliant as you ever were inanimate before, and I-a—am amazingly pleased-yes!"

At his words Lady Hortense's lips curled themselves half-contemptuously. She very often heard him speak in this suave, courteous tone to other ladies, but he seldom, in fact, had never adopted it toward herself since the night when she had confessed her indifference of him, excepting at such times when conventionality required it in the allhearing ears of the world.

"I never knew," said she, "that you were so distinct as to preference in colors. I have always liked white, and as you say, I have worn it considerably of late months. It harmonizes with my colorless life," she added to herself, "but," she went on, "I will endeavor to suit my toilet more in accordance with your taste in future, Sir Philip.'

"I hope," returned Sir Philip, " you will understand you are not to thwart your own pleasure with respect to such trivial matters. Wear what pleases you, only deport yourself properly as Lady Cam

den. I don't want the world to say that I have made a marble image of you, or an ice-plant. Now, will you favor me with the names of those you have invited ?"

With keen bitterness within her, Lady Hortense rose to go in quest of the list, but he stayed her as she reached the door, saying:

"A-never mind the paper. I suppose you have asked no one out of the usual set we meet everywhere?"

"I believe there are two exceptions," said Lady Camden, "Captain Pometer, a present guest of the Dextrells, and Mr. Thayer Volney of England, a nephew of Mrs. Elwood, and only recently arrived."

"Pometer!" repeated Sir Philip, musingly, "I know him, I believe; but this Englishman? is he very young, say three or four and twenty?"

a

"I cannot say, as I have never seen him," responded Hortense, Lady Camden.

"If he is the fellow whom I saw on the street in Boston the other day with Valois Elwood, he has certainly a most striking appearance; he is, in fact, a-what you ladies would deify-a Greek god."

"A Greek god." Lady Hortense repeated almost unconsciously to herself the words; and as she did so she lifted her eyes to the mantel upon which stood a Parian bust of marvelous beauty,

and they softened with a curious, tender light as they rested upon the faultlessly cast features, enveiled in their expression of kindness and intellectuality.

Sir Philip, watching her under his drooping eyelids, saw the look which almost transfigured her face, and an ominous frown gathered above his thick, overhanging brows.

"You are a devoté of the classic ?" he said, and his words were rather in the declarative than questioning tone, and were spoken with sneering contempt.

Then without waiting for her to reply, he asked: "Where did you get that bust? Who is the subject? I have never taken special notice of it before."

“I bought it in Florence when we were abroad last winter. It is of the Athenian Glaucus. The bust opposite is that of Ione," said Lady Hor

tense.

"I remember the subjects vaguely as those of Bulwer," observed Sir Philip.

"I remember them as two of the loveliest and noblest characters in the annals of fiction," exclaimed Lady Hortense fervently.

"Of fiction, or of love?" questioned Sir Philip, insidiously.

"Well, if you will, of love, which is the truest application, indeed.”

Sir Philip pressed his lips firmly together, as

though to repress some words which might have risen to them. Then he rose and measured the room with deliberate step, with his hands clasped behind him and his head bent slightly forward. The attitude was that which he always assumed in moments of suppressed anger, and Lady Hortense watched him in some concern.

At length he returned to the hearth. "I have some letters to write," he said shortly, and then without another word he left her.

When he was gone Lady Camden once more turned her eyes upon the bust of the hero Glau cus, letting them rest upon the marble image for some moments in a fixed gaze.

Then these words came faintly from her lips: "Once in my life have I seen a face which resembled that, both in feature and expression. Valois says her cousin is like my Glaucus. Sir Philip says he is like a Greek god. Could he by any possible chance be Oh, how absurd; how perfectly absurd! That would be consistent with fiction only. Such a remarkable coincidence is rarely met with in real life"; and she put the thought from her entirel. But just before she turned to quit the room she bent her regal head over the image of Glaucus and touched it with her lips. "How happy," she murmured, must Ione have been with such a hero to love her !"

CHAPTER XII

A WATCH-WORD

Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.

-Fletcher.

OR several days the snow continued to fall,

FOR

with short intermissions; but with the full moon came a change in the weather, and the dazzling white-mantled earth froze into a staid solidity which offered its season of exuberant sports to the pleasure-loving world.

Ere the abatement of the storm, Sir Philip had suggested to Lady Camden the postponement of their forthcoming festivities until a less inclement season; but as he saw the elements subsiding into peace, and watched the sovereign moon sail in victorious sublimity over the white-capped hills beyond Maplehurst, he rubbed his fat hands together with renewed ambition, declaring that his entertainments would prove doubly attractive with a seven-mile ride from the railway station, over a road as smooth and solid as ivory, and with an hundred silvern sleigh bells to make inspiring accompaniment for song and laughter.

Thus, with his spirit set at ease on the throne of anticipation the night preceding that appointed for the ball arrived.