“Poor Marcel!” she said to herself. “I dare say he thinks now that he has frightened and offended me so thoroughly that I will not go down and join him at dinner, even on this Christmas-day! And indeed he did more than frighten me—he shocked me so awfully that I am sure I could never bear to look on his poor, wretched face again, if I had not found a way to cure him of his madness, and make him contented—a way that will not require any self-sacrifice on my part either, for I never dreamed of marrying and leaving him. I never liked the idea of marrying. The most unhappy people I ever saw in my life were married people—my aunt and uncle—and the happiest people I ever knew were the unmarried. No! I will never marry and leave my uncle! And when I make him understand this, he will renounce his foolish and sacrilegious mania and rest contented with the company of his niece.” While turning these thoughts over in her mind, she was examining the contents of her wardrobe to select a dress suitable to the occasion. Gloria de la Vera had always dressed in a style too old for her early youth and bright beauty. The reason was perhaps that she saw only elderly or aged people. Now, for this Christmas _tête-à-tête_ dinner with her uncle, she wore a dark blue moiré antique, with low neck and short sleeves richly trimmed with old point lace. Her ornaments were heirlooms of her father’s family—earrings, necklace and bracelets of pearls set in diamonds. Her rippling golden hair was carried back from her forehead and gathered into a shower of ringlets that fell over a low comb from the top of her head to her graceful shoulders. As the second bell rang, she opened the door and descended to the drawing-room. Meanwhile Marcel de Crespigney had returned to the house, entered the privacy of his library, and banged the door to, angrily, behind him. And there he had spent some hours striding up and down the floor and calling down maledictions on his own head for his want of patience and self-control. In the midst of his confusion the sound of the first dinner-bell smote his ears. He did not attend to its warning to go and make his toilet, but continued to walk up and down the floor, breathing imprecations upon his own folly, until the more imperative clangor of the second bell summoned him. “And now,” he said, “I suppose I have so offended and estranged her as to drive her away from the table so that I shall have to dine alone on Christmas-day! Well, it will serve me right if I do!” And with another malediction upon his “madness,” he left the study and walked slowly and sadly into the dining-room. How great was his surprise and pleasure to see his beloved Gloria standing with her hand upon the back of her chair, at the head of the table. He noticed, too, that she was carefully and beautifully dressed—though, with her moiré antique, old point lace and diamonds, more in the style of a middle-aged matron than a very youthful maiden.