clined another girl, young, fair,
and pretty, the amber mouthpiece of a hookah between her lips, and a
couple of young fellows at her feet.

The brunette was Bluette, who played the soubrette roles at the Odeon;
the blonde was Celine Gamelle, the new premiere danseuse. Bluette rose
from the depths of her amber satin fauteuil, with her little _petillant_
eyes laughing, and her small plump hands stretched out in gesticulation.
"Mechant! Comme tu es tard, Ernest. Nous avons ete ici si longtemps--dix
minutes au moins! And dis is you leetler new Ingleesh friend. How do you
do, my dear?"

Nina, white as death, shrank from her, clinging with both hands to
Ernest's arms. As pale as she, Vaughan stood staring at the actress, his
lips pressed convulsively together, the veins standing out on his broad,
high forehead. The bold _Lion_ hunted into his lair, for once lost all
power, all strength.

Gordon looked over Nina's shoulder into the room. He recognized the
women at a glance, and, with his heavy brow dark as night, he glared on
Ernest in a silence more ominous than words or oaths, and snatching
Nina's arm from his, he drew her hand within his own, and dragged her
from the room.

Ernest sprang after him. "Good God! you do not suppose me capable of
this. Stay one instant. Hear me----"

"Let us pass, sir," thundered Gordon, "or by Heaven this insult shall
not go unavenged."

"Nina, Nina!" cried Ernest, passionately, "do you at least listen!--you
at least will not condemn----"

Nina wrenched her hands from her father, and turned to him, a passion of
tears falling down her face. "No, no! have I not promised you?"

With a violent oath Gordon carried her to her carriage. It drove away,
and Ernest, his lips set, his face white, and a fierce glare in his dark
eyes that made Bluette and Celine tremble, entered his salons a second
time, so bitter an anguish, so deadly a wrath marked in his expressive
countenance, that even the Frenchmen hushed their jests, and the women
shrunk away, awed at a depth of feeling they could not fathom or brave.

The fierce anathemas of Gordon, the "Christian" lamentations of
Eusebius, the sneers of Selina, the triumphs of Augusta, all these vials
of wrath were poured forth on Ernest, in poor little Nina's ears, the
whole of the next day. She had but one voice among many to raise in his
defence, and she had no armor but her faith in him. Gordon vowed with
the same breath that she should never see Va