She and her mother quitted early. There was a reception at the embassy this same evening, to which they were going. Before doing so, however, they returned home, as it was close at hand, and Lady Dora entered her room to re-arrange her dress, nominally; but, in fact, to collect her shattered nerves by a few moments quiet. Accordingly, dismissing her maid, she sat alone. There was a large mirror opposite the chair where she sat. After surveying herself some time in the distance, she rose, and pacing the room with her proud, queenly air, stood before it, glowing in beauty. Never mirror gave back any thing more richly beautiful than her face; her eyes of dazzling fire--eyes to make a man bow down in wonder before their power--and then the long heavy ringlet of dark chestnut falling across the heaving bosom, to the waist. She surveyed her beauty, not in petty vanity, but in wonder herself, that so perfect a work of nature had not awed that man to love her, and confess his love--how could he resist her? and loving her, as assuredly he _did_. With this thought a grim doubt arose, like a breath passing over that mirror, to shade her beauty--almost unconsciously she dropped on a seat opposite the glass, which her eyes never quitted; and, as if involuntarily, her hands unclasped the massive bracelets one by one, and laid them on a table beside her. Her maid had placed a bouquet of rich damask roses, looped round the stem with a string of gems, on the side of her beautiful head; for she was not simple in her dress, as Minnie--a more gorgeous style suited her best. Her fingers, though unused to tasks like these, unfastened them, and they dropped from her hand on the floor--all, save the rich dress of antique _moire_, lay around her; and then the girl, unladen by gems, unadorned but by nature, dispirited, broken-hearted, at that nature's bidding covered her face with her hands, and wept bitterly; she _felt_ he could not love her,--to have been so calm beneath her bitter insult in choosing his cousin's society, she felt how much, how madly she loved him; and the proud Lady Dora sobbed in her bitterness. "An artist's wife! the wife of a nameless, illegitimate man! I would be any thing he might become, if he but loved me! But he does!" she cried with sudden energy; "he must! His every word betokened it at once; this one fatal night cannot have made him hate me! He does, and I will prove him! Less would be madness, a longer suspense, the working of that hollow pride which has made me what I am!" When her maid tapped to say, "Lady Ripley was waiting!" she found Lady Dora pale, and with the tears still on her cheek, incapable of aught but an essay at rest on her feverish couch. Her mother was not unused of late to her whims, though she never had carried them to so much excess. It was her own fault. Had she trained this fair plant otherwise, it would have reared itself in cultured beauty towards heaven; as it was rotten at the