She came smilingly up to Count Ville-Handry, and, offering him her brow to kiss, she said,—­

“Do I look well, dear count?”

He trembled from head to foot; and all he could do was to stretch out his lips, and to stammer in an almost ecstatic tone of voice,—­

“Oh, beautiful! too beautiful!”

“It has taken you long enough, I am sure,” said Sir Thorn severely,—­“too long!”

He might have known that Miss Brandon had accomplished a miracle of expeditiousness; for it was not a quarter of an hour since she returned to the house.

“You are an impertinent villain, Thorn,” she said, laughing in the fresh and hearty manner of a child; “and I am very happy that the presence of the count relieves me from your eternal sermons.”

“Sarah!” exclaimed Mrs. Brian reprovingly.

But she had already turned round, with her hand outstretched towards Daniel,—­

“I am so glad you have come, sir!” she said.  “I am sure we shall understand each other admirably.”

She told him this with the softest possible voice; but, if he had known her better, he would have read in the way in which she looked at him, that her disposition towards him had entirely changed since yesterday; then she wished him well; now she hated him savagely.

“Understand each other?” he repeated as he bowed; “in what?”

She made no answer.

The servant announced some of the usual visitors; and she went to receive them.  Ten o’clock struck; and from that moment the invited guests did not cease to arrive.  At eleven o’clock there were perhaps a hundred persons in the room; and in the two adjoining rooms card-tables had been arranged.

It appeared that the gentlemen who showed themselves there—­old men mostly, amply decorated with foreign orders, and young men in extravagantly fashionable costumes—­were not free from suspicion; but they all belonged to Paris high-life, to that society, which, under a dazzlingly brilliant outside, conceals hideous crimes, and allows now and then traces of real misery to be seen through the rents in the splendid livery worn by its members.

Some of these men stood, by the name they bore or the position they filled, high above the rest of the company; they were easily recognized by their haughty manner, and the intense deference with which their slightest remarks were received.  And to this crowd Count Ville-Handry displayed his good-fortune.  He assumed all the airs of the master of the house; as if he had been in his own house, gave orders to the servants, and then, with mock modesty, went from group to group, eagerly picking up all the compliments he could gather on Miss Brandon’s beauty, and his own good luck.

Gracefully reclining in an easy-chair near the fireplace, Miss Sarah looked a young queen surrounded by her court.  But in spite of the multitude of her admirers, and the number of compliments she received at every moment, she never for a moment lost sight of Daniel, watching him all the time stealthily, to read his thoughts in his features.