chain!" began Mrs. Vane, returning to the grievance as the
carriage drove on.

"Oh, Mrs. Vane, what does it signify? I can only think of my broken
cross. I am sure it must be an evil omen."

"An evil--what?"

"An evil omen. Mamma gave me that cross when she was dying. She told me
to let it be to me as a talisman, always to keep it safely; and when I
was in any distress, or in need of counsel, to look at it and strive to
recall what her advice would be, and to act accordingly. And now it is
broken--broken!"

A glaring gaslight flashed into the carriage, right into the face of
Isabel. "I declare," uttered Mrs. Vane, "you are crying again! I tell
you what it is, Isabel, I am not going to chaperone red eyes to the
Duchess of Dartford's, so if you can't put a stop to this, I shall order
the carriage home, and go on alone."

Isabel meekly dried her eyes, sighing deeply as she did so. "I can have
the pieces joined, I dare say; but it will never be the same cross to me
again."

"What have you done with the pieces?" irascibly asked Mrs. Vane.

"I folded them in the thin paper Mrs. Levison gave me, and put it inside
my frock. Here it is," touching the body. "I have no pocket on."

Mrs. Vane gave vent to a groan. She never had been a girl herself--she
had been a woman at ten; and she complimented Isabel upon being little
better than an imbecile. "Put it inside my frock!" she uttered in a
torrent of scorn. "And you eighteen years of age! I fancied you left off
'frocks' when you left the nursery. For shame, Isabel!"

"I meant to say my dress," corrected Isabel.

"Meant to say you are a baby idiot!" was the inward comment of Mrs.
Vane.

A few minutes and Isabel forgot her grievance. The brilliant rooms were
to her as an enchanting scene of dreamland, for her heart was in its
springtide of early freshness, and the satiety of experience had not
come. How could she remember trouble, even the broken cross, as she bent
to the homage offered her and drank in the honeyed words poured forth
into her ear?

"Halloo!" cried an Oxford student, with a long rent-roll in prospective,
who was screwing himself against the wall, not to be in the way of the
waltzers, "I thought you had given up coming to these places?"

"So I had," replied the fast nobleman addressed, the son of a marquis.
"But I am on the lookout, so am forced into them again. I think a
ball-room the greatest bore in life."

"On the lookout for what?"

"For a wife