’Come down, Mirelle: it is time. I have already heard one carriage drive up. How we shall get every one who is invited into this house I do not know.’ ’I will go down presently. You go on without me. I am not wanted as yet.’ Mirelle did not descend for half an hour. When she entered the room where the guests were assembled, it was full. She did not look round her except for a seat, and when she had discovered one she walked to it. She knew nothing of the persons there: they were excellent on their appropriate shelf, but their shelf was not her shelf. Trecarrel and Herring were both present, and saw her. They had been watching for her to come in. Her appearance surprised them. In the well-lighted room, in her white muslin, with white satin bows, and with her head and delicate throat glittering with diamonds, she seemed a spirit; a spectral White Lady. Her face was as colourless as her dress, save for the fine blue veins that marked her temples. She seemed too fragile, too ethereal to belong to the earth. Her beauty was of an order rare in England, unknown in the West. Captain Trecarrel started forward. ’Countess Mirelle,’ said he, ’you are unprovided with a flower. Am I too impertinent if I offer you one? I thought you might possibly be without, and I have brought you a spray of white heath. Will you accept it?’ She raised her eyes, smiled somewhat sadly at him, and took the sprig with a slight bow. Then she put it to her bosom. As she was doing so, her eye encountered that of Herring, who stood by. She recalled his offer of white heath made on the day of her father’s funeral. ’It brings good luck,’ said Trecarrel. The same words that Herring had employed. Mirelle’s hand trembled, and she looked timidly, flutteringly, at Herring. ’Ah!’ said he, ’all the bells have fallen off.’ Then she said, in a half-pleading tone, ’Mr. Herring, I was once very rude and very wrong when I refused the same from you. Now I am rightly punished.’ She removed the sprig. ’You see, Captain,’ she said, as she handed it back to Trecarrel, ’the heath has rained off all its white bells. I am not destined to receive good luck from either you or Mr. Herring. I thank you for the kind attention. I cannot wear the heath now.’ ’Are you engaged for the first dance?’ asked Herring. Mirelle looked at Trecarrel, who turned his head away. He must, of course, open the ball with Orange. After a pause, in a tone tinged with disappointment, she said she was not engaged, and Herring secured her. The appearance of Mirelle in the ball-room caused general surprise. It was an apparition rather than an appearance. The prevailing opinion admitted her beauty, but decided that it was of too refined and pure a type to be pleasing; it was a type suitable for a statue but not for a partner. Men love after their kind; blood calls for blood, not for ice.