in-law; and old Mrs. Mingott, who had summoned him for a
confidential interview, had congratulated him on his cleverness, and
added impatiently: "Silly goose! I told her myself what nonsense it
was. Wanting to pass herself off as Ellen Mingott and an old maid,
when she has the luck to be a married woman and a Countess!"

These incidents had made the memory of his last talk with Madame
Olenska so vivid to the young man that as the curtain fell on the
parting of the two actors his eyes filled with tears, and he stood up
to leave the theatre.

In doing so, he turned to the side of the house behind him, and saw the
lady of whom he was thinking seated in a box with the Beauforts,
Lawrence Lefferts and one or two other men. He had not spoken with her
alone since their evening together, and had tried to avoid being with
her in company; but now their eyes met, and as Mrs. Beaufort recognised
him at the same time, and made her languid little gesture of
invitation, it was impossible not to go into the box.

Beaufort and Lefferts made way for him, and after a few words with Mrs.
Beaufort, who always preferred to look beautiful and not have to talk,
Archer seated himself behind Madame Olenska. There was no one else in
the box but Mr. Sillerton Jackson, who was telling Mrs. Beaufort in a
confidential undertone about Mrs. Lemuel Struthers's last Sunday
reception (where some people reported that there had been dancing).
Under cover of this circumstantial narrative, to which Mrs. Beaufort
listened with her perfect smile, and her head at just the right angle
to be seen in profile from the stalls, Madame Olenska turned and spoke
in a low voice.

"Do you think," she asked, glancing toward the stage, "he will send her
a bunch of yellow roses tomorrow morning?"

Archer reddened, and his heart gave a leap of surprise. He had called
only twice on Madame Olenska, and each time he had sent her a box of
yellow roses, and each time without a card. She had never before made
any allusion to the flowers, and he supposed she had never thought of
him as the sender. Now her sudden recognition of the gift, and her
associating it with the tender leave-taking on the stage, filled him
with an agitated pleasure.

"I was thinking of that too--I was going to leave the theatre in order
to take the picture away with me," he said.

To his surprise her colour rose, reluctantly and duskily. She looked
down at the mother-of-pearl opera-glass in her