he was going on to the Arkell House
ball, and wore the Holme diamonds, which were superb, and which she had
recently had reset. She was in perfect health, and felt unusually
young and unusually defiant. As she stood at the top of the staircase,
smiling, shaking hands with people, and watching Robin Pierce
coming slowly nearer, she wondered a little at certain secret
uneasinesses--they could scarcely be called tremors--which had recently
oppressed her. How absurd of her to have been troubled, even lightly,
by the impertinent proceedings of an American actress, a nobody from the
States, without position, without distinction, without even a husband.
How could it matter to her what such a little person--she always called
Pimpernel Schley a little person in her thoughts--did or did not do?
As Robin came towards her she almost--but not quite--wished that the
speeches at the dinner to Sir Jacob Rowley had not been so long as
they evidently had been, and that her husband were standing beside her,
looking enormous and enormously bored.

"What a crowd!"

"Yes. We can't talk now. Are you going to Arkell House?"

Robin nodded.

"Take me in to supper there."

"May I? Thank you. I'm going with Rupert Carey."

"Really!"

At this moment Lady Holme's eyes and manner wandered. She had just
caught a glimpse of Mrs. Wolfstein, a mass of jewels, and of Pimpernel
Schley at the foot of the staircase, had just noticed that the latter
happened to be dressed in black.

"Bye-bye!" she added.

Robin Pierce walked on into the drawing-rooms looking rather
preoccupied.

Everybody came slowly up the stairs. It was impossible to do anything
else. But it seemed to Lady Holme that Miss Schley walked far more
slowly than the rest of the tiresome dears, with a deliberation that
had a touch of insolence in it. Her straw-coloured hair was done exactly
like Lady Holme's, but she wore no diamonds in it. Indeed, she had on
no jewels. And this absence of jewels, and her black gown, made her skin
look almost startlingly white, if possible whiter than Lady Holme's.
She smiled quietly as she mounted the stairs, as if she were wrapt in a
pleasant, innocent dream which no one knew anything about.

Amalia Wolfstein was certainly a splendid--a too splendid--foil to her.
The Jewess was dressed in the most vivid orange colour, and was very
much made up. Her large eyebrows were heavily darkened. Her lips were
scarlet. Her eyes, which moved incessantly, had