ots. Prosperity and sunshine are not
the best things in the world for it. Sometimes in the gloomy and
desolate places its growth is the sturdiest and its flowers the
sweetest."

The service of dinner had been announced. The English Ambassador took
Adelaide away from me, but as she accepted his arm she looked me in the
eyes with a grave but wonderfully sweet smile.

"I thank you very much, Mr. Greatson," she said. "Our little
conversation has been most pleasant."

The Archduchess swept up to me. She was looking a little annoyed.

"Mr. Greatson," she said, "Isobel is pleading shyness--an absurd excuse.
She insists that you take her in to dinner. I suppose she must have her
own way to-night, but it is annoying."

Madame looked at me as though it were my fault that her plans were
disarranged, which was a little unfair. And then Isobel, very serene,
but with that weary look about the eyes which seemed only to have
increased during the evening, came quietly up and took my arm.

"If this is to be our last evening, Arnold, we will at least spend as
much of it as possible together," she said gently. "I will be a very
dutiful niece, aunt, to-morrow."

We moved off together, but not before I was struck with something
singular in Madame's expression. She stood looking at us two as though
some wholly new idea had presented itself to her. She did not follow us
into the dining-room for some few moments.

The dinner itself, for an informal one, was a very brilliant function.
There were eighteen of us at a large round table, which would easily
have accommodated twenty-four. The Cardinal, whose scarlet robes in
themselves formed a strange note of colour, sat on the Archduchess's
right, touching scarcely any of the dishes which were continually
presented to him, and sipping occasionally from the glass of water at
his side. The other men and women were all distinguished, and their
conversation, mostly carried on in French, was apt, and at times
brilliant. Isobel and I perhaps, the former particularly, contributed
least to the general fund. Isobel met the advances of her right-hand
neighbour with the barest of monosyllables. Lady Delahaye, who sat on my
left, left me for the most part discreetly alone. Yet we two spoke very
little. I could see that Isobel was disposed to be hysterical, and that
her outward calm was only attained by means of an unnatural effort. Yet
I fancied that my being near soothed her, and every time I spoke to