d lamps shot up like tropical flowers among the
palms.

"I don't think Ellen has ever seen this room lighted up," said May,
rising flushed from her struggle, and sending about her a glance of
pardonable pride. The brass tongs which she had propped against the
side of the chimney fell with a crash that drowned her husband's
answer; and before he could restore them Mr. and Mrs. van der Luyden
were announced.

The other guests quickly followed, for it was known that the van der
Luydens liked to dine punctually. The room was nearly full, and Archer
was engaged in showing to Mrs. Selfridge Merry a small highly-varnished
Verbeckhoven "Study of Sheep," which Mr. Welland had given May for
Christmas, when he found Madame Olenska at his side.

She was excessively pale, and her pallor made her dark hair seem denser
and heavier than ever. Perhaps that, or the fact that she had wound
several rows of amber beads about her neck, reminded him suddenly of
the little Ellen Mingott he had danced with at children's parties, when
Medora Manson had first brought her to New York.

The amber beads were trying to her complexion, or her dress was perhaps
unbecoming: her face looked lustreless and almost ugly, and he had
never loved it as he did at that minute. Their hands met, and he
thought he heard her say: "Yes, we're sailing tomorrow in the
Russia--"; then there was an unmeaning noise of opening doors, and
after an interval May's voice: "Newland! Dinner's been announced.
Won't you please take Ellen in?"

Madame Olenska put her hand on his arm, and he noticed that the hand
was ungloved, and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the
evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street
drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have
taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on
his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand
again I should have to follow her--."

It was only at an entertainment ostensibly offered to a "foreign
visitor" that Mrs. van der Luyden could suffer the diminution of being
placed on her host's left. The fact of Madame Olenska's "foreignness"
could hardly have been more adroitly emphasised than by this farewell
tribute; and Mrs. van der Luyden accepted her displacement with an
affability which left no doubt as to her approval. There were certain
things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and