ot yet quite died away.

With all the air of a man who wonders vaguely within himself what in
the world has brought him here, Luttrell makes his way to a vacant
chair and seats himself beside an elderly, pleasant-faced man, too
darkly-skinned and too bright-eyed to belong to this country.

"You are late,--late," says this stranger, in perfect English, and,
with all the geniality of most foreigners, making room for him. "She
has just sung."

"Has she?" Faintly amused. "Who?"

"Miss--Wynter. Ah! you have sustained a loss."

"I am unlucky," says Luttrell, feeling some slight
disappointment,--very slight. Good singers can be heard again. "I came
expressly to hear her. I have been told she sings well."

"Well--_well_!" Disdainfully. "Your informant was careful not to
overstep the truth. It is marvelous--exquisite--her voice," says the
Italian, with such unrepressed enthusiasm as makes Luttrell smile.
"These antediluvian attachments," thinks he, "are always severe."

"You make me more regretful every minute," he says, politely. "I feel
as though I had lost something."

"So you have. But be consoled. She will sing again later on."

Leaning back, Luttrell takes a survey of the room. It is crowded to
excess, and brilliant as lights and gay apparel can make it. Fans are
flashing, so are jewels, so are gems of greater value still,--black
eyes, blue and gray. Pretty dresses are melting into other pretty
dresses, and there is a great deal of beauty everywhere for those who
choose to look for it.

After a while his gaze, slowly traveling, falls on Cecil Stafford. She
is showing even more than usually bonny and winsome in some _chef-d'oeuvre_
of Worth's, and is making herself very agreeable to a tall, lanky,
eighteenth century sort of man who sits beside her, and is kindly
allowing himself to be amused.

An intense desire to go to her and put the fifty questions that in an
instant rise to his lips seizes Luttrell; but she is unhappily so
situated that he cannot get at her. Unless he were to summon up
fortitude to crush past three grim dowagers, two elaborately-attired
girls, and one sour old spinster, it cannot be done; and Tedcastle, at
least, has not the sort of pluck necessary to carry him through with
it.

Cecil, seeing him, starts and colors, and then nods and smiles gayly at
him in pleased surprise. A moment afterward her expression changes, and
something so like dismay as to cause Luttrell astonishment covers her