“I trust my ward’s dinner toilette will be an improvement upon her present appearance, as several guests have been invited.  The Cantata must have bored you immensely.”

He bowed, closed the door, directed the driven to the number of his residence on Fifth Avenue, and disappeared.

Sinking down in one corner, Regina shut her eyes, and groaned.  Could his presence have been accidental?  She had given no one a clue in her movements, and how could he have followed her circuitous route after leaving Mrs. Brompton’s?  He had evinced no surprise, had asked no explanation of her conduct, but would he abstain in future?  Was his promise to trust her the cause of his forbearance?  Or was it attributable to the fact that his thoughts were concentrated upon the lady with whose name people were associating his?

The strain upon her nerves was beginning to relax; her head ached, her eyes smarted, and she felt sick and faint.  Like one in a perplexing dream, she was whirled along the streets, and at last reached home.

The house was already brilliantly lighted, for the day had closed prematurely, with the darkness of the increasing snow, and in the seclusion of her own room the girl threw herself down in a rocking chair.

Everything seemed dancing in kaleidoscopic confusion, and amid the chaos only one grim fact was immovable, she must dress and go down to dinner.  Just now, unwelcome as was the task, she dared not neglect it, for her absence might stimulate the investigation she so much dreaded, and wearily she rose and began her toilette.

At half-past seven Hattie entered.

“Aren’t you ready, miss?  Mrs. Palma says you must hurry down, for the company are all in the parlour, and Mr. Palma has asked for you.  Stop a minute, miss.  Your sash is all crooked.  There, all right.  Let me tell you there is more lace and velvet downstairs than you can show, and jewellery!  No end of it!  But as for born good looks, you can outface them all.”

“Don’t I look very pale and jaded?”

“Very white, miss; you always do, and red cheeks would be as much out of your style as paint on a corpse.  I can tell you what you do look like, more than ever I saw you before; that marble figure with the dove on its finger, which stands in the front parlour bay-window.”

It was Mr. Palma’s pet piece of sculpture, a statue of “Innocence,” originally intended for his library, but Mrs. Palma had pleaded for permission to exhibit it downstairs.

During Regina’s residence in New York scarcely a week elapsed without her meeting guests at the dinner-table, and the frequency of the occurrence had quite worn away the awkward shyness with which she had at first confronted strangers.  Yet to-day she felt nervously timid as she approached the threshold of the brilliant room, and caught a glimpse of those within.

Two gentlemen stood on the rug talking with Olga, a third sat on a sofa engaged in conversation with Mrs. Palma, while Mrs. St. Clare and her daughter entertained two strangers in the opposite corner, and on a tete-a-tete drawn conspicuously forward under the chandelier were Mr. Palma and Mrs. Carew.