unconscious things could tell her how
little his love was worth. He forgot all but his love, however, when he
leaned over her chair in the Gaites and saw that, strenuously as De
Concressault and De Kerroualle sought to distract her attention, and
many as were the lorgnons levelled at the chevelure doree, all her
thoughts and smiles were given to him.

Ernest had never, even in his careless boyhood, felt so happy as he did
that night as he handed her into Gordon's carriage, and drove to the
Chaussee d'Antin; and though Gordon sat there heavy and solemn, looming
like an iceberg on Ernest's golden future, Vaughan forgot him utterly,
and only looked at the sunshine beaming on him from radiant eyes that,
skeptic in her sex as he was from experience, he felt would always be
true to him. The carriage stopped at No. 10, Rue des Mauvais Sujets. He
had given her one or two dinners with the Senecterre, the De Salvador,
and other fine ladies--grand affairs at the Freres Provencaux that would
have satisfied Brillat-Savarin--but she had never been to his rooms
before, and she smiled joyously in his face as he lifted her out--the
smile that had first charmed him at the Francais. He gave her his arm,
and led her across the salle, bending his head down to whisper a
welcome. Gordon and Selina and several men followed. Selina felt that it
was perdition to enter the _Lion's_ den, but a fat old vicomte, on whom
she'd fixed her eye, was going, and the "femmes de trente ans" that
Balzac champions risk their souls rather than risk their chances when
the day is far spent, and good offers grow rare.

Ernest's Abyssinian, mute, subordinate to that grand gentleman, M.
Francois, ushered them up the stairs, making furtive signs to his
master, which Vaughan was too much absorbed to notice. Francois, in all
his glory, flung open the door of the salon. In the salon a sight met
Ernest's eyes which froze his blood more than if all the dead had arisen
out of their graves on the slopes of Pere la Chaise.

The myriad of wax-lights shone on the rooms, fragrant with the perfume
of exotics, gleamed on the supper-table, gorgeous with its gold plate
and its flowers, lighted up the aviary with its brilliant hues of
plumage, and showed to full perfection the snowy shoulders, raven hair,
and rose-hued dress of a woman lying back in a fauteuil, laughing, as De
Cheffontaine, a man but slightly known to Ernest, leaned over her,
fanning her. On a sofa in an alcove re