An idea that was most warmly received. The other members of the party were engaged with cards, chess, or in conversation. Miss Salve, a beautiful Italian, visiting in the neighborhood, was singing, and singing so delightfully that she was listened to with the most profound attention. One by one the members of the little group stole away unperceived, and met in the greenroom with a laugh. There were Lady Hermione, Miss Severn, pretty Clara Seville, Isabel Gordon, a beauty of Spanish type; Lilian Monteith, a calm, grand, impassive blonde, whose share in the programme was simply to look beautiful and say nothing. There were Sir Ronald, Kenelm Eyrle, Captain Gordon and Sir Harry Bellaire. It seemed to Lady Hermione that her assistants were much disposed to waste their time in sentimental conversation. She looked around with that pretty, willful impatience that was one of her greatest charms. “Do let us begin to work,” she said. “Clarice, you open the tableaux with what is really the prettiest of all.” “Your own design,” interrupted Sir Ronald. “Ah, never mind; it is easy to design, but difficult to carry out. Now, ‘Sunshine.’” For the first tableau represented a picture called “Sunshine,” Miss Severn standing in the middle of the stage, her golden hair falling like a bright, gleaming veil around her. Her dress was of some golden-hued fabric that resembled nothing so much as sunbeams. Flowers of every hue were heaped on her white breast and arms, and lay at her feet. The light, arranged so as to fall above, poured a flood of radiance on the brightest picture that was ever seen. “It is simply perfect,” said Kenelm. “I should like all the world to see ‘Sunshine.’” “But you must remember,” said Miss Severn, with a bright blush and a smile, “that every one would not see it with your eyes.” It pierced her to the heart, knowing that she had never looked more beautiful, to see that Sir Ronald did not look at her, made no remark upon the beauty of the picture, neither praised nor suggested, but was simply indifferent. All Kenelm’s admiration was wasted after that. The next tableau was “Evening,” a picture almost as beautiful; Isabel Gordon in a dark dress studded with stars, the light subdued and silvery as moonlight, her dark hair crowned with a wreath of stars, her dreamy, lovely Italian face inexpressibly tender and lovely in the glittering starlight. Clarice noticed that Sir Ronald did admire Isabel Gordon. She overheard him say to Lady Hermione: “If you had searched the world through, you could not have found a lovelier ‘Evening.’” “I think Clarice is the more beautiful of the two,” Lady Hermione replied. “I like the gleam of ‘starlight’ better than the glitter of ‘sunshine,’” he said, and Clarice Severn overheard the words. “It will not be always,” she said to herself; “the time will come when he will love me best.”