hen he came up-stairs--the thick, lustrous folds
of satin billowing upon the carpet around her feet, something white, and
soft, and heavy wrapped about her.

He was conscious of a faint shock of delight on first beholding her. He
had just left Priscilla, pale and heavy-eyed, in dun-colored merino,
poring over a Greek dictionary, and the sudden entering the bright room,
and finding himself facing Theodora North in rose-colored satin, was a
little like electricity.

"Oh! it's Theodora, is it?" he said, slowly, when he recovered himself.
"Thank you, Theodora."

"What for?" asked Theo, blushing.

"For the rose-colored satin," he returned, complacently. "It is so very
becoming. You look like a sultana, my dear Theodora."

Theo looked up at him for a second, and then looked down. Much as she
admired Mr. Denis Oglethorpe, she never quite comprehended him. He had
such an eccentric fashion of being almost curt sometimes. She had seen
him actually give a faint start when he entered, and she had not
understood that, and now he had paid her a compliment, but with so much
of something puzzling hidden in his quiet-sounding voice, that she did
not understand that either--and he saw she did not.

"I have been making a fine speech to Theodora," he said to Lady
Throckmorton, when she came in. "And she does not comprehend it in the
least."

It was somewhat singular, Theo thought, that he should be so silent
after this, for he was silent. He even seemed absent-minded, for some
reason or other. He did not talk to her as much as usual, and she was
quite sure he paid very little attention to Faust.

But during the final act she found that he was not looking at the stage
at all; but was sitting in the shadow of the box-curtain watching
herself. She had been deeply interested in Marguerite a minute before,
and, in her heart-touched pleasure, had leant upon the edge of the box,
her whole face thrilled with excitement. But the steady gaze magnetized
her, and drew her eyes round to the shadowy corner where Denis sat; and
she positively turned with just such a start as he himself had given
when Theodora North, in rose-colored satin, burst upon him, in such
vivid, glowing contrast to Priscilla Gower, in dun merino.

"Oh!" she said, and though the little exclamation was scarcely more than
an indrawn breath, Denis heard it, and came out of his corner to take a
seat at her side, and lean over the box-edge also.

"What is it, Theodora?" he a