led collars, following her!"

He smiled at his own fancy, still watching Kitty with his painter's
eyes.

"She has seen a French print somewhere," said Cliffe, who stood close
by. "More Versailles in it than fairyland, I think!"

"It is <i>she</i> that is fairyland," said Harman, still fascinated.

Cliffe's expression showed the sarcasm of his thought. Fairy,
perhaps!--with the touch of malice and inhuman mischief that all
tradition attributes to the little people. Why, after that first
meeting, when the conversation of a few minutes had almost swept them
into the deepest waters of intimacy, had she slighted him so, in other
drawing-rooms and on other occasions? She had actually neglected and
avoided him--after having dared to speak to him of his secret! And now
Ashe's letter of the morning had kindled afresh his sense of rancor
against a pair of people, too prosperous and too arrogant. The stroke
in the <i>Times</i> had, he knew, gone home; his vanity writhed under it, and
the wish to strike back tormented him, as he watched Ashe mounting
behind his wife, so handsome, careless, and urbane, his jewelled cap
dangling in his hand.

* * * * *

The quadrille of gods and goddesses was over. Kitty had been dancing
with a fine clumsy Mars, in ordinary life an honest soldier and
deer-stalker, the heir to a Scotch dukedom; having as her <i>vis-a-vis</i>
Madeleine Alcot--as the Flora of Botticelli's "Spring"--and slim as
Mercury in fantastic Renaissance armor. All the divinities of the
Pantheon, indeed, were there, but in Gallicized or Italianate form;
scarcely a touch of the true antique, save in the case of one beautiful
girl who wore a Juno dress of white whereof the clinging folds had been
arranged for her by a young Netherlands painter, Mr. Alma Tadema, then
newly settled in this country. Kitty at first envied her; then decided
that she herself could have made no effect in such a gown, and threw her
the praises of indifference.

When, to Kitty's sharp regret, the music stopped and the glittering crew
of immortals melted into the crowd, she found behind her a row of
dancers waiting for the quadrille which was to follow. This was to
consist entirely of English pictures revived--Reynolds, Gainsborough,
and Romney--and to be danced by those for whose families they had been
originally painted. As she drew back, looking eagerly to right and left,
she came across Mary Lyster. Mary wore her hair