ted ladies, Mrs.
Temperley."

"You shew your hand most frankly," she answered; "it almost disarms
one."

A few introductory chords sounded through the room. Hadria was sitting
in front of the window, across which the pale green curtains had been
drawn. Many eyes wandered towards her.

"I should like to paint you just like that," murmured Lady Engleton;
"you can't imagine what a perfect bit of harmony you make, with my
brocade." A cousin of Lord Engleton was at the piano. He played an old
French gavotte.

"That is the finishing touch," added Lady Engleton, below her breath. "I
should like to paint you and the curtains and Claude Moreton's gavotte
all together."

The performance was received with enthusiasm. It deepened Hadria's mood,
set her pulses dancing. She assented readily to the request of her
hostess that she should play. She chose something fantastic and dainty.
It had a certain remoteness from life.

"Like one of Watteau's pictures," said Claude Moreton, who was hanging
over the piano. He was tall and dark, with an expression that betrayed
his enthusiastic temperament. A group had collected, among them
Professor Theobald. Beside him stood Marion Fenwick, the bride whose
wedding had taken place at Craddock Church about eighteen months
before.

It seemed as if Hadria were exercising some influence of a magnetic
quality. She was always the point of attraction, whether she created a
spell with her music, or her speech, or her mere personality. In her
present mood, this was peculiarly gratifying. The long divorce from
initiative work which events had compelled, the loss of nervous vigour,
the destruction of dream and hope, had all tended to throw her back on
more accessible forms of art and expression, and suggested passive
rather than active dealings with life. She was wearied with petty
responsibilities, and what she called semi-detached duties. It was a
relief to sit down in white silk and lace, and draw people to her simply
by the cheap spell of good looks and personal magnetism. That she
possessed these advantages, her life in Paris had made obvious. It was
the first time that she had been in contact with a large number of
widely differing types, and she had found that she could appeal to them
all, if she would. Since her return to England, anxieties and influences
extremely depressing had accustomed her to a somewhat gloomy atmosphere.
To-night the atmosphere was light and soft, brilliant and enervati