She was looking over her white shoulder at the reflection in the long glass behind her, and her maid was standing by with a heap of soft white wrapping drapery on her arm, when Robert knocked at the door of her dressing-room. She bade him "come in," in a pleasant voice, and he did so. "The carriage is waiting. Are you nearly ready?" he said. And then stopped short, and looked at her, literally dazzled with her exceeding beauty. Thus he had seen her, a year ago, the first time he had dined at her father's house, dressed for a ball,--a ball at Mrs. Pendarvis's too,--a ball he had heard mentioned with a kind of hopeless envy. And she had gone downstairs to the carriage with him then. How well he remembered it, how distinctly he saw it all!--the head-dress she had added to her dinner-array, the white cloak--was this which he took from the maid and tenderly placed around her the same? he wondered. It looked like it; but it was another, ten times more costly than Miss Guyon had ever worn. Again he saw the smile, the bow, from the corner of the carriage; again he heard Mr. Guyon's, "Don't stand there, Streightley; come in." And he felt like a man who has formerly seen in a dream things now passing before his eyes. He could not speak before her servant; so he trusted to a glance to tell his wife how beautiful he thought her. He saw immediately that among the jewels she wore were none of his gifts, and he said, with some hesitation, "You do not honour my selection much, Katharine. Would not your bracelet go with your other ornaments, dear?" A splendid serpent, a glittering mass of brilliants, with emerald eyes and protruded ruby tongue, lay on the table. He took it up as he spoke. Katharine looked half-disposed to refuse; then she said gaily: "Never mind if it does contradict the quaint old roses and crescents; I'll wear it, Robert. Put it on, please,--there." And she held out her round white arm.