had designed that dress,” said Mrs. Despard. “It is not Lecomte; it is your very self, in every touch and tint.”

Lisbeth smiled, and looking down the length of the room, where she stood reflected in a mirror at the end of it, unfurled her fan, a gilded fan, thickly strewn with her purple pansies; but she made no reply.

A glass door, in the drawing-room, opened into a conservatory all aglow with light and bloom, and in this conservatory she was standing half an hour later, when the first arrivals came. The door, a double one, was wide open, and she, in the midst of the banks and tiers of flowers, was bending over a vase of heliotrope, singing a low snatch of song.

“The fairest rose blooms but a day,

The fairest Spring must end with May,

And you and I can only say,

Good-by, good-by, good-by!”

She just sang this much, and stopped. One 22 of the two people who had arrived was speaking to Mrs. Despard. She lifted her head, and listened. She could not see the speaker’s face, because a tall, tropical-leaved lily interposed itself. But the voice startled her uncomfortably.

22

“Who is that man?” she said, to herself. “Who is that man?” And then, without waiting another moment, she left the heliotrope, and made her way to the glass door.

Mrs. Despard looked first, and saw her standing there.

“Ah, Lisbeth,” she said, and then turned, with a little smile, toward the gentleman who stood nearest to her. “Here is an old friend,” she added, as Lisbeth advanced. “You are indebted to Mr. Lyon for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Anstruthers again.”

Lisbeth came forward, feeling as if she was on the verge of losing her amiable temper. What was Hector Anstruthers doing here? What did he want? Had he been insane enough to come with any absurd fancy that—that he could—that—. But her irritated hesitance carried her no farther than this. The young man met her halfway, with the greatest self-possession imaginable.

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