e few years than when her picture was painted, her beauty had assumed
a certain defiant expression that sufficiently betrayed the fact that
the years had not been so wholly happy as she had probably anticipated
when she jilted handsome Holman Blake for the old French Count. At all
events so I interpreted the look of latent scorn that burned in her dark
eyes, as she slowly turned her richly bejeweled head towards the corner
where that gentleman stood, and meeting his eyes no doubt, bowed with a
sudden loss of self-possession that not all the haughty carriage of
her noble form, held doubly erect for the next few moments, could quite
conceal or make forgotten.

"She still loves him," I inwardly commented and turned to see if the
surprise had awakened any expression on his uncommunicative countenance.

Evidently not, for the tough old politician of the Fifteenth Ward was
laughing, at one of his own jokes probably, and looking up in the
face of Mr. Blake, whose back was turned to me, in a way that entirely
precluded all thought of any tragic expression in that quarter. Somewhat
disgusted, I withdrew and followed the lady.

I could not get very near. By this time the presence of a live countess
in the assembly had become known, and I found her surrounded by a swarm
of half-fledged youths. But I cared little for this; all I wanted to
know was whether Mr. Blake would approach her or not during the evening.
Tediously the moments passed; but a detective on duty, or on fancied
duty, succumbs to no weariness. I had a woman before me worth studying
and the time could not be thrown away. I learned to know her beauty;
the poise of her head, the flush of her cheek, the curl of her lip, the
glance--yes, the glance of her eye, though that was more difficult to
understand, for she had a way of drooping her lids at times that, while
exceedingly effective upon the poor wretch toward whom she might be
directing that half-veiled shaft of light, was anything but conducive to
my purposes.

At length with a restless shrug of her haughty shoulders she turned away
from her crowd of adorers, her breast heaving under its robing of garnet
velvet, and her whole face flaring with a light that might mean resolve
and might mean simply love. I had no need to turn my head to see who was
advancing towards her; her stately attitude as countess, her thrilling
glance as woman, betrayed only too readily.

He was the more composed of the two. Bowing over her