ddle of the room as
Trennahan entered, leaning lightly upon a little table to rest her
mischievous foot. Only one man was beside her at the moment, and
Trennahan's view of her was uninterrupted. He knew at once who she was.
His second impression was that he had seen few girls so beautiful. His
third, that she possessed something more potent than beauty, and that he
was responding to it with a certain wild flurry of the senses, and a
certain glad exultation in youth and danger which had not been his
portion for many a long year. The instinct of the hunter leaped from its
tomb, shocked into the eager quivering life of its youth. Trennahan was
appalled to hear the fine web he had spun between his senses and his
spirit rent in a second, then gratified at the youthful singing in his
blood. The old joy in recklessness, in surrender to the delirium of the
senses, came back to him. He pushed them roughly aside, and looked about
for Magdalena. She was listening to the rapid delivery of Mr. Rollins.
He thought she looked ill, and was about to go to her when Colonel
Belmont took him by the arm.

"You must meet my daughter," he said. "Oh, bother! There go half a
dozen."

When Trennahan reached Helena, he was presented in the same breath with
two other new arrivals, and her slipper was fairly biting. She did not
even hear his name. She was in a mood to make her swains unhappy; and
she liked Trennahan's face, and what she saw there. There was eager
admiration in his eyes and nostrils, and on his face the record of a man
who might possibly be her match. Of man's deeper and more personal life
she never thought. She had heard that men sometimes loved married women,
and others whose like she had never seen; but she hated the mere fact of
vice as she did all forms of ugliness, and dismissed it from her mind.
She read in Trennahan's face that he had had many flirtations, nothing
more.

"I am not going to dance any more to-night," she announced. She placed
her hand in Trennahan's arm. "Take me to the conservatory," she said.

There was really nothing for him to do but take her. But it was three
hours before either was seen again.

XI

"You are not looking well this morning," said Trennahan, solicitously,
about twelve hours after he had appeared in the ball-room. He had just
entered the Yorbas' private parlour.

"Neither do you," replied Magdalena.

"I sat up late with some of the men, and slept ill after."

Magdalena rai