never seen him look as much pleased," answered Emily Fox-Seton.
"Though he always looks as if he liked talking to you, Lady Agatha. That
large white gauze garden-hat"--reflectively--"is so _very_ becoming."

"It was very expensive," sighed lovely Agatha. "And they last such a
short time. Mamma said it really seemed almost criminal to buy it."

"How delightful it will be," remarked cheering Emily, "when--when you
need not think of things like that!"

"Oh!"--with another sigh, this time a catch of the breath,--"it would be
like Heaven! People don't know; they think girls are frivolous when they
care, and that it isn't serious. But when one knows one _must_ have
things,--that they are like bread,--it is awful!"

"The things you wear really matter." Emily was bringing all her powers
to bear upon the subject, and with an anxious kindness which was quite
angelic. "Each dress makes you look like another sort of picture. Have
you,"--contemplatively--"anything _quite_ different to wear to-night and
to-morrow?"

"I have two evening dresses I have not worn here yet"--a little
hesitatingly. "I--well I saved them. One is a very thin black one with
silver on it. It has a trembling silver butterfly for the shoulder, and
one for the hair."

"Oh, put that on to-night!" said Emily, eagerly. "When you come down to
dinner you will look so--so new! I always think that to see a fair
person suddenly for the first time all in black gives one a kind of
delighted start--though start isn't the word, quite. Do put it on."

Lady Agatha put it on. Emily Fox-Seton came into her room to help to add
the last touches to her beauty before she went down to dinner. She
suggested that the fair hair should be dressed even higher and more
lightly than usual, so that the silver butterfly should poise the more
airily over the knot, with its quivering, outstretched wings. She
herself poised the butterfly high upon the shoulder.

"Oh, it is lovely!" she exclaimed, drawing back to gaze at the girl. "Do
let me go down a moment or so before you do, so that I can see you come
into the room."

She was sitting in a chair quite near Lord Walderhurst when her charge
entered. She saw him really give something quite like a start when
Agatha appeared. His monocle, which had been in his eye, fell out of it,
and he picked it up by its thin cord and replaced it.

"Psyche!" she heard him say in his odd voice, which seemed merely to
make a statement without committin