, whether he were ever to be reclaimed. He looked at her more
than once; not stealthily or humbly, but with a movement of hardy, open
observation. De Hamal was now a fixture beside her; Mrs. Cholmondeley
sat near, and they and she were wholly absorbed in the discourse,
mirth, and excitement, with which the crimson seats were as much astir
as any plebeian part of the hall. In the course of some apparently
animated discussion, Ginevra once or twice lifted her hand and arm; a
handsome bracelet gleamed upon the latter. I saw that its gleam
flickered in Dr. John's eye--quickening therein a derisive, ireful
sparkle; he laughed:----

"I think," he said, "I will lay my turban on my wonted altar of
offerings; there, at any rate, it would be certain to find favour: no
grisette has a more facile faculty of acceptance. Strange! for after
all, I know she is a girl of family."

"But you don't know her education, Dr. John," said I. "Tossed about all
her life from one foreign school to another, she may justly proffer the
plea of ignorance in extenuation of most of her faults. And then, from
what she says, I believe her father and mother were brought up much as
she has been brought up."

"I always understood she had no fortune; and once I had pleasure in the
thought," said he.

"She tells me," I answered, "that they are poor at home; she always
speaks quite candidly on such points: you never find her lying, as
these foreigners will often lie. Her parents have a large family: they
occupy such a station and possess such connections as, in their
opinion, demand display; stringent necessity of circumstances and
inherent thoughtlessness of disposition combined, have engendered
reckless unscrupulousness as to how they obtain the means of sustaining
a good appearance. This is the state of things, and the only state of
things, she has seen from childhood upwards."

"I believe it--and I thought to mould her to something better: but,
Lucy, to speak the plain truth, I have felt a new thing to-night, in
looking at her and de Hamal. I felt it before noticing the impertinence
directed at my mother. I saw a look interchanged between them
immediately after their entrance, which threw a most unwelcome light on
my mind."

"How do you mean? You have been long aware of the flirtation they keep
up?"

"Ay, flirtation! That might be an innocent girlish wile to lure on the
true lover; but what I refer to was not flirtation: it was a look
marking mutu