“Very well,” she said; “I’ll be there directly.”

And, without vouchsafing an explanation, she left the table, and remained perhaps ten minutes away.

“What was it?” asked Count Ville-Handry, with an accent of tenderest interest, when his young wife reappeared.

“Nothing, my dear,” she replied, as she took her seat again,—­“nothing, some orders to give.”

Still Henrietta thought she noticed under this apparent indifference of her step-mother an expression of cruel satisfaction.  More than that, she fancied she saw the countess and Mrs. Brian rapidly exchange looks, one saying, “Well,” and the other answering, “All right.”

The poor girl, prejudiced as she was, felt as if she had been stabbed once more to the heart.

“These wretches,” she thought, “have prepared another insult for me.”

This suspicion took so powerfully hold of her, that when dinner was over, instead of returning to her rooms, she followed her father and his new “friends” into the sitting-room.  Count Ville-Handry spoke of Mrs. Brian and M. Elgin always as “the family.”

They did not long remain alone.  The count and his young wife had probably let it be known that they would be at home that evening; and soon a number of visitors came in, some of them old friends of the family, but the great majority intimates from Circus Street.  Henrietta was too busy watching her stepmother to notice how eagerly she herself was examined, what glances they cast at her, and how careful the married ladies, as well as the young girls, were to leave her alone.  It required a brutal scene to open her mind to the truth, and to bring her thoughts back to the horrible reality of her situation.  That scene came but too soon.

As the visitors increased, the conversation had ceased to be general, and groups had formed; so that two ladies came to sit down close by Henrietta.  They were apparently friends of the young countess, for she did not know them, and one of them had a strong foreign accent.  They were talking.  Instinctively Henrietta listened.

“Why did you not bring your daughter?” asked one of them.

“How could I?” replied the other.  “I would not bring her here for the world.  Don’t you know what kind of a woman the count’s daughter is?  It is incredible, and almost too scandalous.  On the day of her father’s marriage she ran away with somebody, by the aid of a servant, who has since been dismissed; and they had to get the police to help them bring her back.  If it had not been for our dear Sarah, who is goodness itself, they would have sent her to a house of correction.”

A stifled cry interrupted them.  They looked round.  Henrietta had suddenly been taken ill, and had fallen to the ground.  Instantly, and with one impulse, everybody was up.  But the honorable M. Elgin had been ahead of them all, and had rushed up with such surprising promptness at the very moment when the accident happened, that it almost looked as if he had had a presentiment, and was watching for the precise time when his assistance would be needed.