he uninitiated. The guests in the room were musical
connoisseurs,--a class with whom Graham Vane had nothing in common. Even
if he had been more capable of enjoying the excellence of the player's
performance, the glance he directed towards her would have sufficed
to chill him into indifference. She was not young, and with prominent
features and puckered skin, was twisting her face into strange
sentimental grimaces, as if terribly overcome by the beauty and pathos
of her own melodies. To add to Vane's displeasure, she was dressed in
a costume wholly antagonistic to his views of the becoming,--in a Greek
jacket of gold and scarlet, contrasted by a Turkish turban.

Muttering "What she-mountebank have we here?" he sank into a chair
behind the door, and fell into an absorbed revery. From this he was
aroused by the cessation of the music and the hum of subdued approbation
by which it was followed. Above the hum swelled the imposing voice of M.
Louvier as he rose from a seat on the other side of the piano, by which
his bulky form had been partially concealed.

"Bravo! perfectly played! excellent! Can we not persuade your charming
young countrywoman to gratify us even by a single song?" Then turning
aside and addressing some one else invisible to Graham he said, "Does
that tyrannical doctor still compel you to silence, Mademoiselle?"

A voice so sweetly modulated that if there were any sarcasm in the words
it was lost in the softness of pathos, answered, "Nay, Monsieur Louvier,
he rather overtasks the words at my command in thankfulness to those who
like yourself, so kindly regard me as something else than a singer."

It was not the she-mountebank who thus spoke. Graham rose and looked
round with instinctive curiosity. He met the face that he said had
haunted him. She too had risen, standing near the piano, with one
hand tenderly resting on the she-mountebank's scarlet and gilded
shoulder,--the face that haunted him, and yet with a difference. There
was a faint blush on the clear pale cheek, a soft yet playful light in
the grave dark-blue eyes, which had not been visible in the countenance
of the young lady in the pearl-coloured robe. Graham did not hear
Louvier's reply, though no doubt it was loud enough for him to hear. He
sank again into revery. Other guests now came into the room, among them
Frank Morley, styled Colonel,--eminent military titles in the United
States do not always denote eminent military services,--a wealt