in her sight, even as the merest friend?  These despondent thoughts were doubly embittered by the immense scorn he now entertained for himself that he should have been such a fool as to listen for a moment to the silly and malignant gossip circulated among the envious concerning a woman who was admittedly the superior of those who calumniated her.  For clearest logic shows that wherever superiority exists, inferiority rises up in opposition, and the lower endeavours to drag the higher down.  Such vague reflections, coursing rapidly through his, brain, gave him an air of embarrassment and awkwardness not by any means common to him, as he advanced, and Sylvie, half rising from her chair, greeted him in her turn with a little touch of shyness which sent a wave of soft colour over her face, and made her look ten times prettier than ever.

“I am glad to find you alone—­” he began.

“Yes?  I am generally alone,” answered Sylvie with a little smile—­ “except for Katrine—­she would be here to welcome you this evening, but she has a very bad neuralgic headache—­”

“I am very sorry,” murmured Aubrey, with hypocritical earnestness, all the while devoutly blessing Madame Bozier’s timely indisposition.  “She is a great sufferer from neuralgia, I believe?”

“Yes . . .” and Sylvie, to divert the cloud of embarrassment that seemed to be deepening rather than dispersing for them both, rang the bell with a pretty imperativeness that was rather startling to Aubrey’s nerves.

“What is that for?” he enquired irrelevantly.

“Only for coffee!”

Their eyes met,—­the mutual glance was irresistible, and they both laughed.  Sylvia’s Arab page entered in response to her summons, a pretty dusky-skinned lad of some twelve years old, picturesquely arrayed in scarlet, and bearing a quaintly embossed gilt salver with coffee prepared in the Arabian fashion.

“Do you like coffee made in this way?” asked Sylvie, as she handed Aubrey his cup.

Aubrey’s eyes were fixed on the small white hand that looked so dainty, curled over the trifle of Sevres china that was called a coffee-cup,—­and he answered vaguely,

“This way?  Oh, yes—­of course—­any way!”

A faint smile lifted the rosy corners of Sylvie’s mouth as she heard this incoherent reply—­and the Arab page rolled his dark eyes up at his fair mistress with a look of dog-like affectionate enquiry, as to whether perhaps some fault in his serving had caused that little playful enigmatical expression on the face which he, in common with many others of his sex, thought the fairest in the world.  The coffee dispensed and the page gone, there followed a spell of silence.  The fire burned cheerily in the deep chimney, and the great logs cracked and spluttered as much as to say, “If these two curious people can find nothing to talk about, we can!” And then, just as luck would have it, a burning ember suddenly detached itself from the rest and fell out