"Lord, ain't I honored!" she said, smacking her lips with a grin. "A
lady of title to see me! Let her wait! Now then!" and snapping her
fingers, she began her dance, and went through it to the end, with her
usual vigor and frankness. When she had finished, she turned to the
red-faced man who had watched her evolutions with much delight in spite
of the abuse she had heaped upon him, and said with an affected,
smirking drawl--

"Show the lady of title into my dressing-room! I shall be ready for her
in ten minutes. Be sure to mention that I am very shy,--and unaccustomed
to company!"

And, giggling gently like an awkward school-girl, she held down her head
with feigned bashfulness, and stepped mincingly across the stage with
such a ludicrous air of prim propriety, that all her associates burst
out laughing, and applauded her vociferously. She turned and curtsied to
them demurely--then suddenly raising one leg in a horizontal position,
she twirled it rapidly in their faces,--then she gave a little shocked
cough behind her hand, grinned, and vanished.

When, in the stipulated ten minutes, she was ready to receive her
unknown visitor, she was quite transformed. She had arrayed herself in a
trailing gown of rich black velvet, fastened at the side with jet
clasps--a cluster of natural, innocent, white violets nestled in the
fall of Spanish lace at her throat--her face was pale with
pearl-powder,--and she had eaten a couple of scented bon-bons to drown
the smell of her recent brandy-tipple. She reclined gracefully in an
easy chair, pretending to read, and she rose with an admirably acted air
of startled surprise, as one of the errand boys belonging to the
Brilliant tapped at her door, and in answer to her "Come in!" announced,
"Lady Winsleigh!"

A faint, sweet, questioning smile played on the Vere's wide mouth.

"I am not aware that I have the honor of--" she began, modulating her
voice to the requirements of fashionable society, and wondering within
herself "what the d----l" this woman in the silk and sable-fur costume
wanted.

Lady Winsleigh in the meantime stared at her with cold, critical eyes.

"She is positively rather handsome," she thought. "I can quite imagine a
certain class of men losing their heads about her." Aloud she said--

"I must apologize for this intrusion, Miss Vere! I dare say you have
never heard my name--I am not fortunate enough to be famous,--as _you_
are." This with a killing satire in her