w. What do you say to a
quiet game at chess?"

"I cannot say positively. I shall not know what my evening engagements
are until dinner-time."

And then the colonel felt quite relieved. "He is going to call on Lady
Amelie," he thought, "and wherever she goes this evening he will follow.
I shall soon see him like other young men."

As for Basil himself, he simply lived in one longing for two o'clock. My
lady was perfectly ready to receive him. She had arranged a little scene
and smiled to herself as she thought how sure it was to succeed.

"He saw me all magnificence last evening; now I will play a different
role."

She wore a plain dress of some white flowing material, with a knot of
scarlet ribbons on her fair neck; her shining hair was drawn from her
white brow and fell in luxuriant waves; in it she wore one rose half
shrouded in green leaves, and never in all her gorgeous magnificence had
Lady Amelie looked one-half as fair. She was seated in her own boudoir,
where the white daphnes shone like stars in the rosy light. A picture
that would have ravished the heart of any man that gazed upon it, and
Lady Amelie knew that it was perfect, even down to the graceful attitude
and half sad, half languid expression of her face.

It was not much after two when he came. Her reception of him was
perfect--unstudied, graceful, natural; and he looking at her, thought
her more beautiful than ever.

"You were reading," he said; "have I disturbed you?"

"No; Owen Meredith is a favorite poet of mine; there is something very
unworldly and beautiful about his verses."

"That is why you like them--you are so unworldly yourself."

"Perhaps so, in one sense. I have just sufficient tinge of it about me
to teach me that whatever are my thoughts and opinions, if they differ
much from other people's, I must keep them to myself, unless, as is the
case now, I meet a congenial soul."

A view of the subject which was quite new to Basil.

"I thought originality was a sign of genius," he replied, "and that
people admired it."

She smiled with an air of superiority that left him miles behind.

"My observation teaches me that there is nothing worldly people
disapprove of so highly as originality," she said. "To be more clever
than your neighbor is a crime they never pardon."

Basil, drinking in the beauty of that marvelous face, and the light of
those lovely eyes, learned more worldly wisdom in one hour from the
lovely lips of Lady Ame