nison as Samson the
Philistines; and the French princes, for once in their life, drank real
champagne.

Yet all faces were not so serene as those of the party of Hauteville.
Many a one felt that strange mixture of fear and exultation which
precedes a battle. To-morrow was the dreaded St. Leger.

'Tis night, and the banquet is over, and all are hastening to the ball.

In spite of the brilliant crowd, the entrance of the Hauteville party
made a sensation. It was the crowning ornament to the scene, the stamp
of the sovereign, the lamp of the Pharos, the flag of the tower. The
party dispersed, and the Duke, after joining a quadrille with Lady
Caroline, wandered away to make himself generally popular.

As he was moving along, he turned his head; he started.

'Ah!' exclaimed his Grace.

The cause of this sudden and ungovernable exclamation can be no other
than a woman. You are right. The lady who had excited it was advancing
in a quadrille, some ten yards from her admirer. She was very young;
that is to say, she had, perhaps, added a year or two to sweet
seventeen, an addition which, while it does not deprive the sex of the
early grace of girlhood, adorns them with that indefinable dignity which
is necessary to constitute a perfect woman. She was not tall, but as she
moved forward displayed a figure so exquisitely symmetrical that for a
moment the Duke forgot to look at her face, and then her head was turned
away; yet he was consoled a moment for his disappointment by watching
the movements of a neck so white, and round, and long, and delicate,
that it would have become Psyche, and might have inspired Praxiteles.
Her face is again turning towards him. It stops too soon; yet his eye
feeds upon the outline of a cheek not too full, yet promising of beauty,
like hope of Paradise.

She turns her head, she throws around a glance, and two streams of
liquid light pour from her hazel eyes on his. It was a rapid, graceful
movement, unstudied as the motion of a fawn, and was in a moment
withdrawn, yet was it long enough to stamp upon his memory a memorable
countenance. Her face was quite oval, her nose delicately aquiline, and
her high pure forehead like a Parian dome. The clear blood coursed under
her transparent cheek, and increased the brilliancy of her dazzling
eyes. His never left her. There was an expression of decision about her
small mouth, an air of almost mockery in her curling lip, which, though
in themselves wildly f