' said Lesbia, imperiously. 'I have always
been cheated out of this last act for some stupid party. Imagine losing
Gounod and Nillson for the sake of struggling through the mob on a
stifling staircase, and being elbowed by inane young men, with gardenias
in their coats.'

Lady Lesbia had a pretty little way of always opposing any suggestion of
her sweetheart. She was resolved to treat him as badly as a future
husband could be treated. In consenting to marry him she had done him a
favour which was a great deal more than such a person had any right to
expect.

She leant forward to watch and listen, with her elbow resting on the
velvet cushion--her head upon her hand, and she seemed absorbed in the
scene. But this was mere outward seeming. All the enchantment of music
and acting was over. She only heard and saw vaguely, as if it were a
shadowy scene enacted ever so far away. Every now and then her eyes
glanced involuntarily toward Don Gomez, who stood leaning against the
back of the box, pale, languid, graceful, poetic, an altogether
different type of manhood from that with which she had of late been
satiated.

Those deep dark eyes of his had a dreamy look. They gazed across the
dazzling house, into space, above Lady Lesbia's head. They seemed to see
nothing; and they certainly were not looking at her.

Don Gomez was the first man she ever remembered to have been presented
to her who did not favour her with a good deal of hard staring, more or
less discreetly managed, during the first ten minutes of their
acquaintance. On him her beauty fell flat. He evidently failed to
recognise her supreme loveliness. It might be that she was the wrong
type for Cuba. Every nation has its own Venus; and that far away spot
beyond the torrid zone might have a somewhat barbarous idea of beauty.
At any rate, Don Gomez was apparently unimpressed. And yet Lesbia
flattered herself that she was looking her best to-night, and that her
costume was a success. She wore a white satin gown, short in the skirt,
for the luxury of freedom in waltzing, and made with Quaker-like
simplicity, the bodice high to the throat, fitting her like a sheath.

Her only ornaments were a garland of scarlet poppies wreathed from
throat to shoulder, and a large diamond heart which Mr. Smithson had
lately given her; 'a bullock's heart,' as Lady Kirkbank called it.

When the curtain fell, and not till then, she rose and allowed herself
to be clad in a brown velvet New