led glance of Mr. Percy Gryce, whose own lips
were never defiled by tobacco.

"What an absurd question, Bertha!" she exclaimed, blushing at the thought
of the store she had laid in at Lawrence Selden's.

"Why, don't you smoke? Since when have you given it up? What--you
never---- And you don't either, Mr. Gryce? Ah, of course--how stupid of
me--I understand."

And Mrs. Dorset leaned back against her travelling cushions with a smile
which made Lily wish there had been no vacant seat beside her own.

Chapter 3

Bridge at Bellomont usually lasted till the small hours; and when Lily
went to bed that night she had played too long for her own good.

Feeling no desire for the self-communion which awaited her in her room,
she lingered on the broad stairway, looking down into the hall below,
where the last card-players were grouped about the tray of tall glasses
and silver-collared decanters which the butler had just placed on a low
table near the fire.

The hall was arcaded, with a gallery supported on columns of pale yellow
marble. Tall clumps of flowering plants were grouped against a background
of dark foliage in the angles of the walls. On the crimson carpet a
deer-hound and two or three spaniels dozed luxuriously before the fire,
and the light from the great central lantern overhead shed a brightness
on the women's hair and struck sparks from their jewels as they moved.

There were moments when such scenes delighted Lily, when they gratified
her sense of beauty and her craving for the external finish of life;
there were others when they gave a sharper edge to the meagreness of her
own opportunities. This was one of the moments when the sense of contrast
was uppermost, and she turned away impatiently as Mrs. George Dorset,
glittering in serpentine spangles, drew Percy Gryce in her wake to a
confidential nook beneath the gallery.

It was not that Miss Bart was afraid of losing her newly-acquired hold
over Mr. Gryce. Mrs. Dorset might startle or dazzle him, but she had
neither the skill nor the patience to effect his capture. She was too
self-engrossed to penetrate the recesses of his shyness, and besides, why
should she care to give herself the trouble? At most it might amuse her
to make sport of his simplicity for an evening--after that he would be
merely a burden to her, and knowing this, she was far too experienced to
encourage him. But the mere thought of that other woman, who could take a
man up and toss