t
of his loss. The Countess was a woman with a good-natured manner
verging on that oft-claimed feminine quality, humour, and was quickly
sympathetic.

She then began to tell him of a scandal in the political side to which
she nominally belonged, one that had come out of the present crisis;
and that, as for herself, she had sworn to abjure politics for ever on
account of it, so that he was to regard her forthwith as a more
neutral householder than ever. By this time some more people had surged
upstairs, and Pierston prepared to move on.

'You are looking for somebody--I can see that,' said she.

'Yes--a lady,' said Pierston.

'Tell me her name, and I'll try to think if she's here.'

'I cannot; I don't know it,' he said.

'Indeed! What is she like?'

'I cannot describe her, not even her complexion or dress.'

Lady Channelcliffe looked a pout, as if she thought he were teasing
her, and he moved on in the current. The fact was that, for a moment,
Pierston fancied he had made the sensational discovery that the One
he was in search of lurked in the person of the very hostess he had
conversed with, who was charming always, and particularly charming
to-night; he was just feeling an incipient consternation at the
possibility of such a jade's trick in his Beloved, who had once before
chosen to embody herself as a married woman, though, happily, at
that time with no serious results. However, he felt that he had been
mistaken, and that the fancy had been solely owing to the highly charged
electric condition in which he had arrived by reason of his recent
isolation.

The whole set of rooms formed one great utterance of the opinions of the
hour. The gods of party were present with their embattled seraphim, but
the brilliancy of manner and form in the handling of public questions
was only less conspicuous than the paucity of original ideas. No
principles of wise government had place in any mind, a blunt and jolly
personalism as to the Ins and Outs animating all. But Jocelyn's interest
did not run in this stream: he was like a stone in a purling brook,
waiting for some peculiar floating object to be brought towards him and
to stick upon his mental surface.

Thus looking for the next new version of the fair figure, he did not
consider at the moment, though he had done so at other times, that this
presentiment of meeting her was, of all presentiments, just the sort of
one to work out its own fulfilment.

He looked for her