is sure to
be there--no grand ball is complete without her. She is so surrounded
now. I hardly like to interrupt her. Are you going to the Hexham ball?"

Now Basil had said no, he should certainly decline the invitation, but
he seemed to forget it.

"Certainly I shall go," he said.

"Ah, then we shall see her there," replied the colonel, and his long
mustache concealed the triumphant smile with which he listened to the
words.

CHAPTER VIII.

Lady Amelie at Home.

The poets of old must have been thinking of a woman like Lady Amelie
when they wrote of circes and sirens, and women whose beauty has proved
fatal to men. It is perhaps quite as well that they are very rare--the
power of a beautiful woman is great. If she be good, and use it for a
good purpose; the world is the better for it. If she be bad, and her
beauty is simply used as a lure, the world is the worse for it.

Either for good or evil, the power of Lady Amelie was great, for a more
royally beautiful woman had seldom been seen. She was the very ideal of
glowing, luxurious loveliness, and her beauty was perhaps the least of
her charms. She had that wonderful gift of fascination which makes even
a plain woman irresistible. Allied to beauty so wondrous as hers, it was
fatal.

It is morning, and Lady Amelie, fresh and radiant as a June rose, is in
her boudoir, an exquisite little room, hung with pink silk and white
lace; the windows were draped with pink silk, and the light that came
through was subdued and rosy, the fairest of all lights in which to see
a fair woman.

A gem of a room, from which a painter would have made a room glowing in
luxurious color. The air was heavy with the perfume of white hyacinths
and daphnes--the jardinieres were filled with the sweetest of flowers;
Lady Amelie loved them so well; she was never so pleased as when in the
midst of them. There was a marble Flora, whose hands were filled with
purple heliotropes--in fact, every beauty that money, taste or luxury
could suggest, was there. Pale pink was a color that Lady Amelie
loved--her chairs and couches were covered with it. She is sitting now
in a pretty, fantastic chair, the subdued rosy light of the room falling
full upon her. She is reading the fashionable daily paper, smiling as
some on dits meet her eye. Surely such beauty as that should be
immortal. No wonder that Basil Carruthers, whose eyes had never rested
long on a woman's face before, should not weary of h