It was superstition, undoubtedly.  She was well aware that Starling had not believed that the set would be used again.  An extraordinary order, that might well have sent him away wondering; for the Lowestoft had been reserved for occasions.  Ah, but this was to be an occasion, a festival!  The whimsical fancy grew in her mind as the day progressed, and she longed with an unaccustomed impatience for nightfall, and anticipation had a strange taste.  Mathilde, with the sympathetic gift of her nation, shared the excitement of her mistress in this fete.  The curtains in the pink bedroom were drawn, and on the bed, in all its splendour of lace and roses, was spread out the dinner-gown-a chef-d’oeuvre of Madame Barriere’s as yet unworn.  And no vulgar, worldly triumph was it to adorn.

Her heart was beating fast as she descended the stairway, bright spots of colour flaming in her cheeks and the diamonds sparkling in her ears.  A prima donna might have guessed her feelings as she paused, a little breathless on the wide landing under the windows.  She heard a footstep.  Hugh came out of the library and stood motionless, looking up at her.  But even those who have felt the silence and the stir that prefaces the clamorous applause of the thousands could not know the thrill that swept her under his tribute.  She came down the last flight of steps, slowly, and stopped in front of him.

“You are wonderful, Honora!” he said, and his voice was not quite under control.  He took her hand, that trembled in his, and he seemed to be seeking to express something for which he could find no words.  Thus may the King have looked upon Rosamond in her bower; upon a beauty created for the adornment of courts which he had sequestered for his eyes alone.

Honora, as though merely by the touch of his hand in hers, divined his thought.

“If you think me so, dear,” she whispered happily, “it’s all I ask.”

And they went in to dinner as to a ceremony.  It was indeed a ceremony filled for her with some occult, sacred, meaning that she could not put into words.  A feast symbolical.  Starling was sent to the wine-cellar to bring back a cobwebbed Madeira near a century old, brought out on rare occasions in the family.  And Hugh, when his glass was filled, looked at his wife and raised it in silence to his lips.

She never forgot the scene.  The red glow of light from the shaded candles on the table, and the corners of the dining room filled with gloom.  The old butler, like a high priest, standing behind his master’s chair.  The long windows, with the curtains drawn in the deep, panelled arches; the carved white mantelpiece; the glint of silver on’ the sideboard, with its wine-cooler underneath,—­these, spoke of generations of respectability and achievement.  Would this absorbed isolation, this marvellous wild love of theirs, be the end of it all?  Honora, as one detached, as a ghost in the corner, saw herself in the picture with startling clearness.  When she looked up, she met her husband’s eyes.  Always she met them, and in them a questioning, almost startled look that was new.  “Is it the earrings?” she asked at last.  “I don’t know,” he answered.  “I can’t tell.  They seem to have changed you, but perhaps they have brought out something in your face and eyes I have never seen before.”