und the young gentleman in evening dress ready to accompany him home.

Salome Levison was dressed for dinner, and seated in the drawing-room
with her chaperone, Lady Belgrade.

Salome was certainly not expecting any guest. But she intended to go to
the opera that evening with Lady Belgrade, to hear the last act of Norma.
Luckily for Sir Lemuel's plan, it was not a peremptory engagement, and
could easily be set aside.

On this evening she was beautifully dressed. She wore a delicate tea-rose
tinted rich silk skirt, with an over skirt of point lace, looped up with
tea-rose buds, a tea-rose in her dark hair, a necklace of opals set in
diamonds, and bracelets of the same beautiful jewels. Refined, elegant,
and most interesting she certainly looked.

Meanwhile, the banker came home, and himself conducted the unexpected
guest to the drawing-room.

"Mr. John Scott, my dear," said Sir Lemuel, bringing the young gentleman
up to his daughter.

The young marquis caught the sudden lighting up of those soft, gray eyes,
and the sudden flushing of those delicate cheeks.

It was but for an instant; for even as he bowed before her, her eyes fell
and her color faded.

It was but for an instant, yet in that glance those eyes had again
revealed her soul to his.

The young marquis was not a vain man. He could not at once believe the
evidence of his own consciousness. But he found it rather more awkward to
sit down and open a conversation with this pale, shy girl, than he ever
had in his palmiest days to make himself agreeable to the brightest
beauty that ever honored Castle Lone with a visit.

For once the presence of a chaperone was not unwelcome to a pair of young
people secretly in love with each other.

Lady Belgrade chattered of the weather, the opera the park, and what not,
and relieved the embarrassment of the lovers during the interval in which
Sir Lemuel Levison had gone to change his dress.

The young marquis seldom spoke to Salome, but when he did, his voice sank
to a low, tender, reverential tone that thrilled her inmost spirit. She
replied to him only in soft monosyllables, but her drooping eyelids, and
kindling cheeks, told him all he wished to know. He might have wondered
more at the interest he had seemed to excite in a girl he had met but
once before, had he not had a corresponding experience himself. He knew
that he himself had been deeply impressed by this sweet, shy, pale girl,
on the first meeting of her s