, with
sleeves so short that when he waved his arms (which he did with almost
every sentence) he reminded one of a juggler requesting his audience to
notice that he has absolutely nothing up his sleeves.

'Lady Durwent,' he exclaimed, striking an attitude and looking over his
Cyrano-like nose with his right eye as if he were aligning the sights
of a musket, 'don't tell me I'm late. If you do, I shall never speak
to the Duke of Earldub again--never!'

As he refused to move an inch until assured that he was not late, and
as Lady Durwent was anxious to proceed with the main business of the
evening (to say nothing of maintaining the friendship between Smyth and
the Duke of Earldub, whose part in his dilatory arrival was rather
vague), she granted the necessary pardon, whereupon he straightened his
legs and winked long and solemnly at Norton Pyford.

'Good gracious!' cried Lady Durwent just as she was about to suggest an
exodus to the dining-room, 'I had forgotten all about Elise!' She
hurriedly rang the bell, which was answered by the butler. 'Send word
to Miss Elise that'----

'Milady,' said the servitor, addressing an arc-light just over the
door, 'she is descending the stairs this very minute.'

III.

There are moments when women appear at their best--fleeting moments
that cannot be sustained. Sometimes it is a tremor of timidity that
lends a fawn-like gentleness to their movements, and a frightened
wistfulness to the eye, too subtle a thing of beauty to bear analysis
in words. A sudden triumph, noble or ignoble, the conquering of a
rival, the sound of a lover's voice, will flush the cheek and liberate
the whole radiancy of a woman's being. Such moments come in every
woman's life, when the quick impulse of emotion achieves an unconscious
beauty that defies the ordinary standards of critical appreciation. It
is that little instant that is the torch to light a lover's worship or
a poet's verses--to send strange yearnings into a young man's breast
and set an old man's memory philandering with the distant past.

It was such a moment for Elise Durwent as she stood in the doorway, the
overhanging arc touching her hair and shoulders with the high lights of
some master's painting. Conversation ceased, and in every face there
was the universal homage paid to beauty, even though it be tendered
grudgingly.

She was dressed in a gown of deep blue, that colour which renders its
ageless tribute to the fair women of