to the Palace to-night?"

The fan waved on. "Thank you, but I go in our coach, and need no escort."
The lady yawned, very delicately, behind her slender fingers; then dropped
the fan, and spoke with animation: "Ah, here is Mr. Lee! In a good hour,
sir! I saw the bracelet that you mended for Mistress Winston. Canst do as
much for my poor chain here? See! it and this silver heart have parted
company."

Mr. Lee kissed her hand, and took snuff with Mr. Haward; then, after an
ardent speech crammed with references to Vulcan and Venus, chains that
were not slight, hearts that were of softer substance, sat down beside
this kind and dazzling vision, and applied his clever fingers to the
problem in hand. He was a personable young gentleman, who had studied at
Oxford, and who, proudly conscious that his tragedy of Artaxerxes, then
reposing in the escritoire at home, much outmerited Haward's talked-of
comedy, felt no diffidence in the company of the elder fine gentleman. He
rattled on of this and that, and Evelyn listened kindly, with only the
curve of her cheek visible to the family friend. The silver heart was
restored to its chain; the lady smiled her thanks; the enamored youth
hitched his chair some inches nearer the fair whom he had obliged, and,
with his hand upon his heart, entered the realm of high-flown speech. The
gay curtains waved; the roses were sweet; black Chloe sewed and sewed; the
hairdresser's hands wove in and out, as though he were a wizard making
passes.

Haward rose to take his leave. Evelyn yielded him her hand; it was cold
against his lips. She was nonchalant and smiling; he was easy, unoffended,
admirably the fine gentleman. For one moment their eyes met. "I had been
wiser," thought the man, "I had been wiser to have myself told her of
that brown witch, that innocent sorceress! Why something held my tongue I
know not. Now she hath read my idyl, but all darkened, all awry." The
woman thought: "Cruel and base! You knew that my heart was yours to break,
cast aside, and forget!"

Out of the house the sunlight beat and blinded. Houses of red brick,
houses of white wood; the long, wide, dusty Duke of Gloucester Street;
gnarled mulberry-trees broad-leafed against a September sky, deeply,
passionately blue; glimpses of wood and field,--all seemed remote without
distance, still without stillness, the semblance of a dream, and yet keen
and near to oppression. It was a town of stores, of ordinaries and public
plac