rought the perfume of their furs,
and more especially of the violets which each one wore on her muff,
according to the then prevailing charming fashion, and their presence
diffused a delicious air of warmth and fragrance. Outside, the rain
continued to fall, and the light to fade. Here and there a little flame
of gas struggled feebly with such daylight as remained.

'Going--going--gone!' The stroke of the hammer put Lord Humphrey
Heathfield in possession of the Florentine helmet. The bidding then
began for smaller articles, which passed in turn from hand to hand down
the long table. Elena handled them carefully, examined them, and placed
them in front of Andrea without remark. There were enamels, ivories,
eighteenth century watches, Milanese goldsmiths' work of the time of
Ludovico the Moor, Books of Hours inscribed in gold letters on pale blue
vellum. These precious things seemed to increase in value under the
touch of Elena's fingers; her little hands had a faint tremor of
eagerness when they came in contact with some specially desirable
object. Andrea watched them intently, and his imagination transformed
every movement of her hands into a caress. 'But why did she place each
thing upon the table instead of passing it to him?'

He forestalled her next time by holding out his hand. And from
thenceforth the ivories, the enamels, the ornaments passed from the
hands of the lady to those of her lover, to whom they communicated an
ineffable thrill of delight. He felt that thus some particle of the
charm of the beloved woman entered into these objects, just as a portion
of the virtue of the magnet enters into the iron. It was, in truth, the
magnetic sense of love--one of those acute and profound sensations which
are rarely felt but at love's beginning, and which, differing
essentially from all others, seem to have no physical or moral seat, but
to exist in some neutral element of our being--an element that is
intermediate, and the nature of which is unknown.

'Here again is a rapture I have never felt before,' thought Andrea.

A kind of torpor seemed creeping over him. Little by little, he was
losing consciousness of time and place.

'I recommend this clock to your notice,' Elena was saying to him, with a
look the full significance of which he did not for the first moment
understand.

It was a small Death's-head, carved in ivory with extraordinary power
and anatomical skill. Each jaw was furnished with a row of diamond