plication, and she was always helplessly puzzled by figures. Moreover
she had not seen Trenor since the day of the Van Osburgh wedding, and in
his continued absence the trace of Rosedale's words was soon effaced by
other impressions.

When the opening night of the opera came, her apprehensions had so
completely vanished that the sight of Trenor's ruddy countenance in the
back of Mr. Rosedale's box filled her with a sense of pleasant
reassurance. Lily had not quite reconciled herself to the necessity of
appearing as Rosedale's guest on so conspicuous an occasion, and it was a
relief to find herself supported by any one of her own set--for Mrs.
Fisher's social habits were too promiscuous for her presence to justify
Miss Bart's.

To Lily, always inspirited by the prospect of showing her beauty in
public, and conscious tonight of all the added enhancements of dress, the
insistency of Trenor's gaze merged itself in the general stream of
admiring looks of which she felt herself the centre. Ah, it was good to
be young, to be radiant, to glow with the sense of slenderness, strength
and elasticity, of well-poised lines and happy tints, to feel one's self
lifted to a height apart by that incommunicable grace which is the bodily
counterpart of genius!

All means seemed justifiable to attain such an end, or rather, by a happy
shifting of lights with which practice had familiarized Miss Bart, the
cause shrank to a pin-point in the general brightness of the effect. But
brilliant young ladies, a little blinded by their own effulgence, are apt
to forget that the modest satellite drowned in their light is still
performing its own revolutions and generating heat at its own rate. If
Lily's poetic enjoyment of the moment was undisturbed by the base thought
that her gown and opera cloak had been indirectly paid for by Gus Trenor,
the latter had not sufficient poetry in his composition to lose sight of
these prosaic facts. He knew only that he had never seen Lily look
smarter in her life, that there wasn't a woman in the house who showed
off good clothes as she did, and that hitherto he, to whom she owed the
opportunity of making this display, had reaped no return beyond that of
gazing at her in company with several hundred other pairs of eyes.

It came to Lily therefore as a disagreeable surprise when, in the back of
the box, where they found themselves alone between two acts, Trenor said,
without preamble, and in a tone of sulky authori