over certain neglected arrears,
or while she wrote letters under his royal dictation, and Hazel sewed a
laborious seam between them, as always. Here, at length, after
sufficient tantalization by its means, Marlboro' venturously intruded
himself every day. Too familiar for interruption, he took another seat,
and watched her swift hand's graceful progress. If her pen delayed, she
found another awaiting her,--her posture wearied, a footstool was rolled
towards her feet,--her side cramped, behold, a cushion,--she looked for
fresh paper, it fell before her: all somewhat slavish service, and which
Hazel could have rendered as well. Used to slaves, would she have
preferred a master? Whether Miss Changarnier relished these abject
kindnesses better than Mr. St. George's imperious exactions was
precisely the thing that puzzled the two gentlemen.

Meanwhile, during all this gay season, if Eloise had thought of once
looking about her, which she never did, she would have seen, that, in
whatever group she was, there, too, was Mr. St. George,--that, if they
rode three abreast down the great park-avenues, though she laughed with
Evan Murray, it was to Mr. St. George's horse that her bridle was
secured,--and that, when she sang, it was St. George who jested and
smiled and lightly talked the while,--not that her music was not sweet,
but that its spell was too strong for him to endure beneath his mask.
Yet Eloise drew no deductions; if at first she noticed that it was he
who laid the shawl on her shoulders, if she remembered, that, when he
fastened her dropping bracelet, biting his lip and looking down, he held
the wrist an instant with a clasp that left its whitened pressure there,
she remembered, too, that he never spoke to her, were it avoidable, that
he failed in small politenesses of the footstool or the fan, and that,
if once he had looked at her in an instant's intentness of singular
expression, and let a smile well up and flood his eyes and lips and
face, in a heart-beat it had faded, and he was standing with folded arms
and looking sternly away beyond her, while she caught herself still
sitting there and bending forward and smiling up at him like a flower
beneath the sun;--to atone for her remissness, she was frowning and cool
and curt to Earl St. George for days.

* * * * *

It was about this time, that, one night, when Hazel passed the tea,
Eloise's eye, wandering a moment, suddenly woke from a