pper. Three flasks of champagne
stood in a little ice-pail in one corner, and on a dumbwaiter was
arranged a dessert, which, for the season, displayed every charm of
rarity. A large bouquet of moss-roses and camellias ornamented the
centre of the board, and shed a pleasant odor through the room. The
servant, whose dress and look bespoke him a waiter from a restaurant in
the neighborhood, had just completed all the arrangements of the table,
placing chairs around it, and heaped fresh wood upon the hearth, when a
carriage drew up at the door. The merry sound of voices and the step of
feet were heard on the stairs, and the next moment a lady entered, whose
dress of black lace, adorned with bouquets of blue flowers, admirably
set off a figure and complexion of Spanish mould and character. To
this, a black lace veil fastened to the hair behind, and worn across
the shoulders, contributed. There was a lightness and intrepidity in her
step, as she entered the room, that suited the dark, flashing, steady
glance of her full black eyes. It would have, indeed, been difficult to
trace in that almost insolent air of conscious beauty the calm, subdued,
and almost sorrow-struck girl whom we have seen as Nina in a former
chapter; but, however dissimilar in appearance, they were the same
one individual; and the humble femme de chambre of Kate Dalton was the
celebrated ballet-dancer of the great theatre of Barcelona.

The figure which followed was a strange contrast to that light and
elegant form. He was an old, short man, of excessive corpulence in body,
and whose face was bloated and purple by intemperance. He was dressed in
the habit of a priest, and was in reality a canon of the Dome Cathedral.
His unwieldy gait, his short and labored respiration, increased almost
to suffocation by the ascent of the stairs and his cumbrous dress,
seemed doubly absurd beside the flippant lightness of the "Ballarina."
Jekyl came last, mimicking the old canon behind his back, and putting
the waiter's gravity to a severe test by the bloated expansion of his
cheek and the fin-like motion of his hands as he went.

"Ecco me!" cried he out, with a deep grunt, as he sank into a chair and
wiped the big drops from his forehead with the skirt of his gown.

"You tripped up the stairs like a gazelle, padre," said the girl, as she
arranged her hair before the glass, and disposed the folds of her veil
with all the tact of coquetry.

A thick snort, like the ejacula