"Good-bye to you, then," returned her sister-in-law, "where there is one Regina there's no room for another!" "Good heavens! what presumption!" laughed the other. "Well, then, come on." Arduina led the way through the carriages and through the smart crowd which animated the hall; then humbly inquired of a waiter if Miss Harris were at home. The waiter bent his head and listened, but without looking at the two ladies. "Miss Harris? I think she's at home. Take a seat," he replied absently, his eyes on the distance. Regina remembered Madame Makuline's awe-inspiring servants; this man provoked not only awe, but a sort of terror. They went into the conservatory, and Arduina looked about with respectful admiration. The younger lady was silent, lost in the dream world she saw before her. Apparently they had intruded into a _fête_. A strange light of ruddy gold streamed from the glass roof; among the palm-trees, treading on rich carpets, was a phantasmagoria of ladies dressed in silks and satins, with long rustling trains, their heads, ears, necks, brilliant with jewels. Bursts of laughter and the buzz of foreign voices mixed with the rattle of silver and the ring of china cups. It was a palace of crystal; a world of joy, of fairy creatures unacquainted with the realities of life, dwelling in the enchantment of groves of palms, rosy in the light of dream! "The realities of life!" thought Regina, "but is not this the reality of life? It's the life of us mean little people which is the ugly dream!" Just then a splendid creature, robed in yellow satin, who, as she passed, left behind her the effulgence of a comet, crossed the conservatory, and stopped to speak to two ladies in black. "It's Miss Harris!" whispered Arduina; "she's coming!" Regina had never imagined there could exist a being so beautiful and luminous. She watched her with dilated eyes, while from the far end of the conservatory breathed slow and voluptuous music overpowering the voices, the laughter, the rattle of the cups. Miss Harris drew nearer. Regina's eyes grew wild, she was overpowered by almost physical torture, by burning sadness. The rosy sunset light brooding over the palms as in an Oriental landscape, the warmth, the scent, the music, the dazzling aspect of the wealthy foreigner, all produced in her a kind of nostalgia, the atavic recollection of some wondrous world, where all life was pleasure and from which she had been exiled. Ah! at that moment she realised quite clearly what was the ill disease gnawing at her vitals! Ah! it was not the regret, the nostalgia for her early home, for her childish past; it was the death of the dreams which had filled that past, dreams which had perfumed the air she had breathed, the paths she had trod, the place where she had dwelt: dreams which were no fault of her own because born with her, transmitted in her blood, the blood of a once dominant race.