irection, subtlety, finesse--study our
mutual friend Count Poltavo!"

She meant it mischievously, and produced the effect she desired.

At the name the young man's brow darkened.

"He isn't coming here to-night?" Doughton asked, in aggrieved tones.

The girl nodded, her eyes dancing with laughter.

"What can you see in that man, Doris?" he protested. "I'll bet you
anything you like that the fellow's a rogue! A smooth, soft-smiling
rascal! Lady Dinsmore," he appealed to the elder woman, "do you like
him?"

"Oh, don't ask Aunt Patricia!" cried the girl. "She thinks him quite the
most fascinating man in London. Don't deny it, auntie!"

"I shan't," said the lady, calmly, "for it's true! Count Poltavo"--she
paused, to inspect through her lorgnette some new-comers in the opposite
box, where she got just a glimpse of a grey dress in the misty depths of
the box, the whiteness of a gloved hand lying upon the box's
edge--"Count Poltavo is the only interesting man in London. He is a
genius." She shut her lorgnette with a snap. "It delights me to talk
with him. He smiles and murmurs gay witticisms and quotes Talleyrand and
Lucullus, and all the while, in the back of his head, quite out of
reach, his real opinions of you are being tabulated and ranged neatly in
a row like bottles on a shelf."

Doris nodded thoughtfully.

"I'd like to take down some of those bottles," she said. "Some day
perhaps I shall."

"They're probably labelled poison," remarked Frank viciously. He looked
at the girl with a growing sense of injury. Of late she had seemed
absolutely changed towards him; and from being his good friend, with
established intimacies, she had turned before his very eyes into an
alien, almost an enemy, more beautiful than ever, to be true, but
perverse, mocking, impish. She flouted him for his youth, his bluntness,
his guileless transparency. But hardest of all to bear was the delicate
derision with which she treated his awkward attempts to express his
passion for her, to speak of the fever which had taken possession of
him, almost against his will. And now, he reflected bitterly, with this
velvet fop of a count looming up as a possible rival, with his _savoir
faire_, and his absurd penchant for literature and art, what chance had
he, a plain Briton, against such odds?--unless, as he profoundly
believed, the chap was a crook. He determined to sound her guardian.

"Mr. Farrington," he asked aloud, "what do _you_ think--hall