This picture had been delayed so long, that at last hearing the shout of applause behind the scenes, the audience began to call for their share.  In haste, but not the less effectively, Theresa and the rest threw themselves into attitude and the curtain was pulled aside.  Daisy wished she could have been in the drawing-room, to see the picture; she knew it must be beautiful; but she was supporting one jewelled arm of Queen Esther and obliged by her duty to look only at the Queen’s face.  Daisy thought even that was a good deal to look at, it was so magnificently surrounded with decoration:  but at the same time she was troubled about Nora and sorry for her own foolishness, so that her own face was abundantly in character for the grave concern that sat upon it.  This picture met with, great favour.  The people in the library were in much glee after it was over; all but Daisy and Nora.

“It is all spoiled!” said the latter.  “The evening has been hateful.  I wish I hadn’t come.”

“O Nora! don’t say that,” Daisy urged.  “The pictures are almost over now; and then we shall have supper.”

“I don’t want supper!  I only wanted to be Queen Esther and you said I might.  It was the prettiest picture of the whole lot.”

“But I couldn’t help it, Nora.”

“I could have done it just as well as Theresa!  She didn’t look handsome a bit.”

“O Nora, I think she did—­for a picture.”

“She didn’t a bit; the things she had on looked handsome.”

Daisy was called away.  Her last dressing was to be done now, and the one of which Daisy was most doubtful.  She was to stand for the angel in the “Game of Life.”  Other people had no doubt about it.  Mrs. Sandford was sure that the angel’s wings would make a good representation, which Daisy was slow to believe; near by, they looked so very like gauze and pasteboard!  They were arranged, at any rate, to appear as if they grew out of her shoulders; she was arrayed in flowing white draperies over her own little cambrick frock; and then she was ready.  Hamilton came in.  He was to be the young man in the picture.  Daisy liked his appearance well.  But when Preston followed him, she felt unspeakably shocked.  Preston was well got up, in one respect; he looked frightful.  He wore a black mask, ugly but not grotesque; and his whole figure was more like the devil in the picture than Daisy had imagined it could be.  She did not like the whole business at all.  There was no getting out of it now; the picture must be given; so the performers were placed.

Hamilton and Preston sat on two sides of a chess-board, and behind them the little angel stood watching the game.  Mrs. Sandford was right.  By a skilful placing and shielding of the lamps, the lights were thrown broadly where they ought to be, on faces and draperies, leaving the gauze wings of the angel in such obscurity that they just shewed as it was desired they should.  The effect was extremely good, and