But, when he was gone, she knew that she was shaken almost to pieces by her interview with him, and she could hardly string herself up to go, as arranged, with her aunt and Carrie, to a fashionably patronised _matinee_ in which a _debutante_, in whose performance Mr Carisbrooke was interested, was to play _Juliet_. Amethyst was too high-strung a creature not to be susceptible to dramatic excitement; she was no critic of acting, and was not perhaps so familiar with the play, that it did not come upon her with some freshness. Its influence seized her like a sort of madness, possessing and changing her. Whether the spirit breathed airs from heaven or blasts from hell, it was absolute. Given a Romeo, Juliet's was the only course--the charnel-house rather than the County. This was a force to which her own nature answered, which Mr Carisbrooke had already done something to awaken. Here was a great and mighty impulse, which would make life worth living, or death worth dying. She did not cry, or melt with pity over the woes of Juliet, she felt the force of such passion in herself, she saw the power of such self-devotion. Her real self seemed to flash into life, as she recalled her own brief love-story, her own young love. And to-night she was to see her old lover again. Not only prudence, expediency, worldly wisdom, would go down before the flood, but right and wrong, if there was any right but allowing such a force of nature to have its way. She went home, and put on her simplest white dress, and clasped the amethysts round her neck, and put the purple stars in her hair, just as she had worn them at Cleverley more than two years ago. When she went in to Una, who was glad enough to make her health an excuse for not meeting the two young men, the girl looked at her half frightened. "Amethyst," she said, "you never looked so lovely in your life." So thought Sylvester Riddell, as he came into the drawing-room among the other guests of the evening, with Lucian Leigh by his side. He was pale and nervous, and felt intensely the awkwardness of the situation as they walked up to Lady Haredale. Lucian's extreme straightforwardness saved him from the difficulty. "Lady Haredale," he said very low, "I have to beg your pardon." "What for, Mr Leigh? Oh, I haven't at all a good memory, but all our Cleverley friends are welcome, as I told my daughter when she happened to mention that you were coming. Mrs Leigh is not in town?" She smiled with cheerful sweetness, but Lucian felt as if she had dashed a cup of cold water in his face. He looked handsome and striking, with his tall slight figure, and his delicate, regular face bronzed with travel, and marked by an intense gravity of expression. "Oh, my stars," whispered Tory to Kattern, "he's a deal more thorough-bred than Sir Richard!" While Miss Haredale sighed over the wild insanity that had allowed him to appear at this juncture.