not, in her usual tyrannical fashion, forbidden me. I did not
tell her you were expected to-night; I wanted to give her a pleasant
surprise. Here she is now."

The door was pushed open and Weir entered the room. Dartmouth checked
an involuntary exclamation and went forward to meet her. She had on a
long white gown like that she had worn the morning he had asked her to
marry him, but the similarity of dress only served to accentuate the
change the intervening time had wrought. It was not merely that
she had lost her color and that her face was haggard; it was an
indefinable revolution in her personality, which made her look ten
years older, and left her without a suggestion of girlishness. She
still carried her head with her customary hauteur, but there was
something in its poise which suggested defiance as well, and which was
quite new. And the lanterns in her eyes had gone out; the storms had
been too heavy for them. All she needed was the costume of the First
Empire to look as if she had stepped out of the locket he had brought
from Crumford Hall.

As she saw Dartmouth, the blood rushed over her face, dyeing it to the
roots of her hair, then receded, leaving it whiter than her gown. When
he reached her side she drew back a little, but he made no attempt to
kiss her; he merely raised her hand to his lips. As he did so he could
have sworn he saw the sun flashing on the domes beneath the window;
and over his senses stole the perfume of jasmine. The roar without was
not that of the ocean, but of a vast city, and--hark!--the cry of the
muezzin. How weird the tapestry looked in the firelight, and how the
figures danced! And he had always liked her to wear white, better even
than yellow. He roused himself suddenly and offered her his arm. The
butler was announcing dinner.

They went into the dining-room, and Dartmouth and Sir Iltyd talked
about the change of ministry and the Gladstone attitude on the Irish
question for an hour and a quarter. Weir neither talked nor ate, but
sat with her hands clasped tightly in her lap. Dartmouth understood
and sympathized. He felt as if his own nerves were on the rack, as if
his brain had been rolled into a cord whose tension was so strained
that it might snap at any moment. But Sir Iltyd was considerate.
He excused himself as soon as dessert was removed, on the plea of
finishing an important historical work just issued, and the young
people went directly to the drawing-room. As Dartmout