occurred one evening, when, for want of knowing what
better to do, he responded to an invitation sent by one of the few
ladies of rank whom he numbered among his friends, and set out in a
cab for the square wherein she lived during three or four months of the
year.

The hansom turned the corner, and he obtained a raking view of the
houses along the north side, of which hers was one, with the familiar
linkman at the door. There were Chinese lanterns, too, on the balcony.
He perceived in a moment that the customary 'small and early' reception
had resolved itself on this occasion into something very like great and
late. He remembered that there had just been a political crisis,
which accounted for the enlargement of the Countess of Channelcliffe's
assembly; for hers was one of the neutral or non-political houses at
which party politics are more freely agitated than at the professedly
party gatherings.

There was such a string of carriages that Pierston did not wait to take
his turn at the door, but unobtrusively alighted some yards off and
walked forward. He had to pause a moment behind the wall of spectators
which barred his way, and as he paused some ladies in white cloaks
crossed from their carriages to the door on the carpet laid for the
purpose. He had not seen their faces, nothing of them but vague forms,
and yet he was suddenly seized with a presentiment. Its gist was that
he might be going to re-encounter the Well-Beloved that night: after her
recent long hiding she meant to reappear and intoxicate him. That liquid
sparkle of her eye, that lingual music, that turn of the head, how well
he knew it all, despite the many superficial changes, and how instantly
he would recognize it under whatever complexion, contour, accent,
height, or carriage that it might choose to masquerade!

Pierston's other conjecture, that the night was to be a lively political
one, received confirmation as soon as he reached the hall, where a
simmer of excitement was perceptible as surplus or overflow from above
down the staircase--a feature which he had always noticed to be present
when any climax or sensation had been reached in the world of party and
faction.

'And where have you been keeping yourself so long, young man?' said his
hostess archly, when he had shaken hands with her. (Pierston was always
regarded as a young man, though he was now about forty.) 'O yes, of
course, I remember,' she added, looking serious in a moment at though