inches shorter than his brother, and altogether unlike him. Yet he, too, was good-looking, in a certain way. "That's just the beauty of it," he said. "Lady Swindon has prepared a little surprise for her guests. She's just that sort of woman, you know. Denison told me about it at the club, a few minutes before you came in for lunch. I shouldn't have bothered you to come if I hadn't known there was something good on." "I dislike surprises," his brother answered wearily. "Half the pleasure of a thing lies in anticipation, and surprises rob one of that. Let us go, Arthur; there [pg 34] are plenty here to enjoy this novelty, whatever it is. Come and have a weed at my rooms, and we'll talk over something for to-night." [pg 34] Arthur shook his head and laid his hand upon Paul's coat-sleeve. "You don't know what's coming off, old fellow; I wouldn't miss it for anything. Great Scott! there's the bishop. Wonder how he'll like it? and there's Lady May over there, Paul. You're booked, old man, if she looks this way." Paul leant forward with a faint show of interest, and looked in the direction indicated. "I thought that the Westovers went North yesterday," he remarked. "Lady May said that they expected it." "Likely enough. 'Gad! the performance is going to commence," Arthur exclaimed, quickly. "Paul, you are going to have a new sensation. You are going to see the most beautiful woman in the world." There was a little hush, and every one had turned towards the upper end of the room. Some heavy curtains had been rolled aside, disclosing a space, only a few yards square, which had been covered by a tightly stretched drugget. There was a little curious anticipation amongst the uninitiated. Then the comparative silence was broken by the strains of a waltz from a violin, somewhere in the background. No one had ever heard it before. There was a wilder, dreamier [pg 35] air with it, than anything Waldteufel had ever written. And, while every one was wondering whose music it could be, a woman glided out from behind a screen, and stood for a second swaying herself slightly in the centre of the drugget. Even that slight rhythmical motion of her body seemed to bring her into perfect sympathy with the curious melody which was filling the hushed room. And while the people watched her, already, in varying degrees, under the spell of that curious fascination which her personality and the exercise of her art seldom failed to excite, she
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