It was late in the evening when he reached Altes. His mother and Miss Vyse, ignorant of the precise hour at which his arrival might be expected, were just about leaving the drawing-room for the night. The children, of course, were in bed; but, in the fulness of his happy heart, Ralph went and kissed little Sybil as she lay asleep. How forcibly it reminded him of his last return to the Rue des Lauriers! He only saw Lady Severn and his cousin-by-courtesy for a very few minutes; but even in that time his quick perception revealed to him some slight change in the manner of both. In Florence it was the most marked. Her tone seemed to him more natural because more unrestrained. A sort of contemptuous indifference to him, united to something of triumph and secret satisfaction, peeped out in her carelessly good-natured, rather condescending greeting. She was looking very well too, exceedingly radiant and handsome. Her white skin appeared positively dazzling, her clear black eyebrows in their faultless curve, relieving what might otherwise have been too marble-like for attractive living beauty; her glorious hair, in which nestled a cluster of crimson roses (of a peculiar and carefully-selected shade, by contrast browning the surface they lay on) shone a mass of burnished gold; for by candlelight the tinge of red only intensified its lustre and richness. She stood thus for a moment, under the full glare of the lamp—a rash thing for any but a perfectly beautiful woman to do; but Florence knew herself to be one of the few whose charms are immensely increased by such an ordeal—her eyes cast down—fortunately so, if she were challenging the young man’s admiration, for wonderfully fine as they were Ralph never could succeed in admiring them, nor her, when he felt them fixed on his face. She was dressed in black, something soft and sweeping, but yet intensely black; and from out of its midst curved her round white arms, rose her beautiful, dazzling neck and throat, on which lay some heavy coils of dull, red gold chain, or beads. A golden rope was the appearance they presented at a little distance, or “rather,” thought Ralph, as in his moment’s glance he saw the coils heave slightly as she breathed, “are they like some magical snake she has bewitched to serve her purpose?” It was a silly fancy, but it dispelled the momentary impression of her great beauty; which, not to have been struck by, one must needs have been less or more than human.