somehow got connected with
that of the leading actress at the Brilliant, and more people than Lady
Winsleigh began to make jocose whispering comments on his stage
"amour"--comments behind his back, which he was totally unaware of.
Nobody knew quite how the rumor had first been started. Sir Francis
Lennox seemed to know a good deal about it, and he was an "intimate" of
the "Vere" magic circle of attraction. And though they talked, no one
ventured to say anything to Sir Philip himself;--the only two among his
friends who would have spoken out honestly were Beau Lovelace and
Lorimer, and these were absent.

One evening, contrary to his usual custom, Sir Philip went out after the
late dinner. Before leaving, he kissed his wife tenderly, and told her
on no account to sit up for him--he and Neville were going to attend to
a little matter of business which might detain them longer than they
could calculate. After they had gone, Thelma resigned herself to a
lonely evening, and, stirring the fire in the drawing-room to a cheerful
blaze, she sat down beside it. First, she amused herself by reading over
some letters recently received from her father,--and then, yielding to a
sudden fancy, she drew her spinning-wheel from the corner where it
always stood, and set it in motion. She had little time for spinning
now, but she never quite gave it up, and as the low, familiar whirring
sound hummed pleasantly on her ears, she smiled, thinking how quaint and
almost incongruous her simple implement of industry looked among all the
luxurious furniture, and costly nick-nacks by which she was surrounded.

"I ought to have one of my old gowns on," she half murmured, glancing
down at the pale-blue silk robe she wore, "I am too fine to spin!"

And she almost laughed as the wheel flew round swiftly under her
graceful manipulations. Listening to its whirr, whirr, whirr, she
scarcely heard a sudden knock at the street-door, and was quite startled
when the servant, Morris, announced--"Sir Francis Lennox!"

Surprised, she rose from her seat at the spinning-wheel with a slight
air of hauteur. Sir Francis, who had never in his life seen a lady of
title and fashion in London engaged in the primitive occupation of
spinning, was entirely delighted with the picture before him,--the tall,
lovely woman with her gold hair and shimmering blue draperies, standing
with such stateliness beside the simple wooden wheel, the antique emblem
of household industry. I