The hairdresser drew a comb through the rippling brown tresses and commenced his most elaborate arrangement, working with pursed lips, and head bent now to this side, now to that. He had been a hard-pressed man since sunrise, and the lighting of the Palace candles that night might find him yet employed by some belated dame. Evelyn was very pale, and shadows were beneath her eyes. Moved by a sudden impulse, she took from the table a rouge pot, and hastily and with trembling fingers rubbed bloom into her cheeks; then the patch box,--one, two, three Tory partisans. “Now I am less like a ghost,” she said, “Mr. Green, do I not look well and merry, and as though my sleep had been sound and dreamless?” In his high, cracked voice, the hairdresser was sure that, pale or glowing, grave or gay, Mistress Evelyn Byrd would be the toast at the ball that night. The lady laughed, for she heard Haward’s step upon the landing. He entered to the gay, tinkling sound, tent over the hand she extended, then, laying aside hat and cane, took his seat beside the table. “‘Fair tresses man’s imperial race insnare, And beauty draws us with a single hair,’” he quoted, with a smile. Then: “Will you take our hearts in blue to-night, Evelyn? You know that I love you best in blue.” She lifted her fan from the table, and waved it lightly to and fro. “I go in rose color,” she said. “’Tis the gown I wore at Lady Rich’s rout. I dare say you do not remember it? But my Lord of Peterborough said”--She broke off, and smiled to her fan. Her voice was sweet and slightly drawling. The languid turn of the wrist, the easy grace of attitude, the beauty of bared neck and tinted face, of lowered lids and slow, faint smile,--oh, she was genuine fine lady, if she was not quite Evelyn! A breeze blowing through the open windows stirred their gay hangings of flowered cotton; the black girl sat in a corner and sewed; the supple fingers of the hairdresser went in and out of the heavy hair; roses in a deep blue bowl made the room smell like a garden. Haward sighed, so pleasant was it to sit quietly in this cool chamber, after the glare and wavering of the world without. “My Lord of Peterborough is magnificent at compliments,” he said kindly, “but ’twould be a jeweled speech indeed that outdid your deserving, Evelyn. Come, now, wear the blue! I will find you white roses; you shall wear them for a breast knot, and in the minuet return me one again.” Evelyn waved her fan. “I dance the minuet with Mr. Lee.” Her tone was still sweetly languid, her manner most indifferent. The thick and glossy tress that, drawn forward, was to ripple over white neck and bosom was too loosely curled. She regarded it in the mirror with an anxious frown, then spoke of it to the hairdresser. Haward, smiling, watched her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Mr. Lee is a fortunate gentleman,” he said. “I may gain the rose, perhaps, in the country dance?”