peace of mind."

"If you send me away, I suppose that I must obey. A hostess is a despot
whom no one may defy."

Miss Windsor smiled pleasantly at the Duke of Bayswater, who just then
offered her his arm with great solemnity. Geoffrey bowed to her and the
Duke, and walked slowly into the adjoining room.

In a dimly-lighted corner he saw a tall, heavily-built man, with a long
red mustache, talking to a remarkably beautiful woman.

"Mrs. Carey and old Charlie Featherstone?" he said to himself, as he
stopped to look at them and to await a pause in their conversation
before he interrupted them.

"Why, it is Eleanor Leigh!" he exclaimed a moment later, as she turned
her head from the shadow of a great Japanese screen, behind which the
pair had sought shelter from prying eyes.

"Eleanor Leigh, my old sweetheart, to whom I bade farewell in the dark
library of my old tutor's home, seven years ago."

She did not look in his direction, and he had a few moments to observe
her carefully.

The slender girl whom he remembered had grown into a superb woman. Her
head was poised upon her shoulders like that of a Greek goddess, and
around her white throat gleamed a collar of brilliants. A
tightly-fitting black gown made by contrast her bosom and arms dazzling
in whiteness. Her hair was rolled into a large round knot at the back of
her head, and its coils shone red-brown in the soft glow of the candles.
Her face seemed cold and calm to him as he looked at her, a faint,
mocking smile played upon her full, red lips, and her delicate eyebrows
were slightly raised. All of a sudden she turned toward him, and their
eyes met in a flash of recognition. He remembered those eyes well, but
here was something in them which was not there when his brain last
thrilled with their magnetic glances--a something which he could not
understand, but which repelled him. She raised her hand and seemed to
beckon to him, and he obeyed her command.

"You remember me, then, Lord Brompton," she said coldly, as she gave him
her hand.

"Remember you!" he exclaimed, and was at a loss for words. Featherstone,
who had withdrawn a step or two, seemed to see his confusion, and after
welcoming his old friend back to England went away.

Mrs. Carey looked up at Geoffrey with a mocking smile, as if deriding
his embarrassment. "So we meet again after all these years, Geoffrey?"
He looked down at the floor, confused and shame-faced, as he thought of
the time when he