t spoil your pleasure in discovering
her. Mon Dieu! Ernest, she's looking at you, and smiles as if she
recognised you. Was there ever so lucky a Lauzun?"

Vaughan could have laughed outright to see by the brightness of the
girl's expression that she knew the saviour of her bouquet again, for
though he was accustomed to easy conquests, such naive interest in him
at such short notice was something new to him.

He didn't take his lorgnon off her again, and she was certainly worth
the honor, with her soft, lustrous gold hair, the eyes that defy
definition--black in some lights, violet in others--a wide-arched
forehead, promising plenty of brains, and a rayonnante, animated, joyous
expression, quite refreshing to anybody as bored and blase as Vaughan
and De Concressault. As soon as the last piece was over Vaughan slipped
out of his loge, and took up his station at the entrance.

He didn't wait in vain: the golden hair soon came, on the arm of a
gentleman--middle aged, as Vaughan noticed with a sensation of
satisfaction. She glanced up at him as she passed: he looked very
handsome in the gas glare. Vaughan perhaps was too sensible a fellow to
think of his pose, but even _we_ have our weaknesses under certain
circumstances, as well as the crinolines. Luckily for him, he chanced to
have in his pocket a gold serpent bracelet he had bought that morning
for some fair dame or demoiselle. He stopped her, and held it out to
her.

"I beg your pardon, mademoiselle," he said in French, "but I think you
dropped this?"

She looked up at him with the sunniest of smiles as she answered, in a
pure accent, "No monsieur, thank you, it does not belong to me."

The middle-aged man glanced sideways at him with true British
suspicion--I dare say a pickpocket, a Rouge, and Fieschi, were all mixed
up in his mind as embodied in the graceful figure and bold glance of the
_Lion_. He drew the girl on, looking much like a heavy cloud with a
bright sun ray after it; but she half turned her head over her shoulder
to give him a farewell smile, which Ernest returned with ten per cent.
interest.

"Anglais," said Emile, concisely.

"Malheureusement," said Ernest as briefly, as he pushed his way into the
air, and saw the gold hair vanish into her carriage. He went quickly up
to the cocher.

"Ou demeurent-ils, mon ami?" he whispered, slipping a five-franc piece
into his hand.

The man smiled. "A l'Hotel de Londres, monsieur; No. 6, au premier."

"