the very last of the invited guests. Considering the elaborate toilet
she had made she had shown wonderful despatch, and though I have no
pretensions to be versed in these mysteries, I should have been inclined
to think that such a display as she made could only have been achieved
with an hour or two's labor. In spite of haste, if she had been really
pressed for time, her make-up was as perfect as ever, and what with
her flashing white shoulders and flashing white teeth, her sparkling
diamonds and sparkling eyes, and the artistic flush of artificial color
on lier cheeks, she looked quite dazzling.

Dinner was announced at the very instant of her arrival, and the count
himself took her in to dinner. That, in the light of my latest knowledge
of the lady, was the cruellest thing to remember, but the little
traitress was all smiles and pompousness, and smiled and chatted as if
no thought of mischief had ever entered her heart. Lady Rollinson had
confided Violet to my care, and I sat at table between her and the
baroness. She talked across me to my companion until my nerves grew
rigid with the strain of the repression I was compelled to lay upon
myself, and the dinner, which ought to have been a little foretaste of
heaven to a newly-accepted lover, was a long-drawn discomfort. There
were two gentlemen at the table besides the count and myself, but they
were both Italians, and had no notion of the English custom of sitting
over their wine after dinner. The count was a total abstainer, for his
long-enforced abstention had taught him a curious delicacy of palate,
so that all wines were actually distasteful to him. When the ladies had
retired we smoked a cigarette, drank a cup of black coffee, and made our
way to the drawing-room, where Lady Rollinson had promised us something
unusual in the way of music. It was my right to have monopolized
Violet's society, or if not actually to have monopolized it, to have
taken a full share of it. I found opportunity to whisper to her that I
had an especial reason for speaking to the baroness, and while the music
was going on I planted myself at that lady's side. She received me with
more than her usual foreign affability, and chattered so rapidly that
one or two of the guests, who I suppose really cared for the performance
then going on, cast glances of open disapproval in her direction. The
little woman was quite at home, however, and continued to talk with
great animation. I made two or th