"The cunning old fox," said Felise to herself, while she drew her black brows angrily together. "Already he has been trying to find the way to her heart." "He is rather fine-looking for one who is certainly no longer young--don't you think so, Bonnibel?" pursued the wily girl. "Certainly," said Bonnibel, willing to praise Colonel Carlyle because she thought it would please Felise; "he does not seem so very old, and he is quite handsome and stately-looking." Whatever Felise might have replied to this was interrupted by the entrance of Lucy, Bonnibel's maid. A broad smile lighted her comely, good-natured features at the sight of the visitor. "For you, miss," said she, going up to Bonnibel and putting in her hand a small volume of splendidly-bound poems and a rare hot-house bouquet, whose fragrance filled the room, and turning to Miss Herbert she added: "Colonel Carlyle is waiting in the drawing-room, Miss Herbert." Felise made no answer to the maid. She swept forward and looked at the flowers in Bonnibel's hand. It was a lovely bouquet, composed almost entirely of white flowers. A lily filled the center, surrounded by exquisite rose-buds and waxen tube-roses and azalias. The border of the lovely floral tribute was a delicate fringe of blue forget-me-nots. On a small white card depending from the bouquet was written these words: "MISS VERE, with the compliments of the day from her father's friend." "Her father's friend," said Felise, reading it aloud. "That must mean Colonel Carlyle." "I suppose so," said Bonnibel, simply. "He is very kind to remember me to-day. You will thank him for me, Felise." "Certainly," Felise answered. She took up the book--a handsome copy of one of the modern poets--and glanced rapidly through it, but found no writing or underscoring within it, as her jealous fancy had expected. "I must go," she said, putting it down and trailing her silken skirts hurriedly from the room. Lucy looked after her with a slight smile. She, in common with all the domestics, hated the overbearing Felise and it pleased her to see what her innocent young mistress never dreamed of--that Mrs. Arnold's daughter was furiously jealous and angry because of her suitor's tribute to Bonnibel. The colonel's tribute to Miss Herbert was a much more pretentious one than that which had been the cause of arousing her jealousy up-stairs. He brought her a bracelet of gold, set with glowing rubies, and a bouquet that was a perfect triumph of the floral art. Its central flower was a white japonica, and sprigs of scarlet salvia blazed around it; but Felise remembered the modest white lily up-stairs, with its suggestive circle of forget-me-nots, and her eyes blazed with scarcely concealed anger as she thanked the colonel for his gifts.