The man knocked at the door for his mistress, and then hurried away to do her errand.

It was the conventional “dinner call” that brought Valerie to the Hotel Borghese.

An English footman admitted the visitor, conducted her to the private drawing-room of Lady C., and announced her.

Several other ladies, whom Valerie had met at the dinner party, were there on the same duty as herself.

Lady C. advanced from among them to receive the new comer, kissed her on both cheeks, inquired affectionately after her health and then made her sit down in the most comfortable of the easy-chairs at hand.

After courteously saluting the ladies present, Valerie subsided into a dull silence, from which she could not arouse herself; but her voice was not missed, since every visitor seemed anxious to talk rather than listen, and therefore kept up a chattering that would have carried off the palm in a contest with a village sewing-circle or aviary full of excited magpies.

Valerie, the last to enter, was also the first to rise, but Lady C. detained her by a slight signal, and she sat down again, and relapsed into dullness and silence.

One by one the visitors arose and took leave, chattering to the very last.

As soon as the two ladies were left alone together, Lady C. took Valerie’s hand, and gazing earnestly in her face, said: 

“What is the matter with you, my child?  You look pale and ill.  Although I am so glad to see you, under any circumstances, I am half inclined to scold you for coming out at all.”

For a moment Valerie felt inclined to open her oppressed and suffering heart to this sweet, matronly friend, and tell her the whole, bitter truth, and seek her wise counsel; but again the want of moral courage, which had always been so fatal to her welfare, sealed her lips.

“Well,” said Lady C., after a short pause for that answer that never came, “I will not press the question.  ’The heart knoweth its own bitterness.’”

“Yes,” murmured Valerie, in a very low voice.  Then, not to seem indifferent or unsocial, and also, if the truth must be told of her, to gratify a gnawing curiosity, she inquired: 

“How goes the expected marriage of your niece, madame?”

“I cannot tell you dear.  I have been daily expecting some communication on the subject from de Volaski:  but as yet he has made none.  After coming to Paris for the purpose, (for of course his office in the embassy is a mere sinecure and a plausible excuse,) he betrays the bashfulness of a girl in pressing his suit; but some men, some of the best and purest of men, are just that way—­in love affairs as shy women,” said her ladyship.

Valerie smiled bitterly.  She thought she understood the reason why the Count de Volaski was in no hurry to press the suit for marriage with a dreaming girl, to whom he had been arbitrarily contracted when he was a boy of fifteen, and she a child of twelve.