Mr. Etheridge stood at the door clad in evening dress, which, old-fashioned and well-worn as it was, sat upon him with a gracious air, and made him look more distinguished than ever. The fly was waiting at the door, and he glanced at his watch and took a step toward the stairs, when a light appeared above, and a light step sounded over his head. The next moment a vision, as it seemed to him, floated into sight, and came down upon him. Stella was in the cream sateen dress--the exquisite lace was clinging round her slender, graceful throat--there was a red rose in her hair; but it was not the dress, nor the lace, nor the rose even, which chained the painter's eye--it was the lovely girlish face. The excitement had brought a dash of warm color in the clear olive cheeks and a bright light into the dark eyes; the lips were half-apart with a smile, and the whole face was eloquent of youth's fresh tide of life and spirits. If they had had all Howell and James' stock to choose from, they could not have chosen a more suitable dress--a more becoming color; the whole made a fitting frame for the girlish beauty. "Well, uncle!" she said, with a little blush. "What have you done to yourself, my child?" he said, with simple open-eyed wonder. "Isn't she--isn't it beautiful?" murmured Mrs. Penfold, in an ecstasy. "But then, if it had been a morning cotton, it would have been all the same." And she proceeded to wrap a woolen shawl round her so carefully as if she was something that might be destroyed at too hard a touch. "Mind she has this wound round her like this when she comes out, sir, and be sure and keep the window up." "And don't let the air breathe on me, or I shall melt, uncle," laughed Stella. "Upon my word, I'm half disposed to think so," he muttered. Then they entered the fly--Mrs. Penfold disposing the short train of the despised sateen with gingerly care--and started. "How have you managed it all?" asked the old man, quite bewildered. "I feel quite strange conveying a brilliant young lady." "And I feel--frightened out of my life," said Stella, with a little breath and a laugh. "Then you conceal your alarm with infinite art," he retorted. "That's just it," she assented. "My heart is beating like a steam hammer, but, like an Indian at the stake, I am determined to smile to the end. They will be very terrible, uncle, will they not?" "Who?" he asked. "The countess and the paragon--I mean Lady Lenore Beauchamp. I shall have to be careful, or I shall be calling her the paragon to her face. What would she do, uncle?" "Smile and pass it by with a gracious air," he said, laughing. "You are a clever and a bold girl, Stella, but even you could not take 'a rise,' as we used to say in my school-days, out of Lady Lenore." "I am not clever, and I am trembling like a mouse," said Stella, with a piteous little pout. "You'll stand by me, uncle, won't you?" He laughed.