There was a pause, then the old countess said, almost abruptly: "Why is she here?" Lady Wyndward filled a cup carefully before replying. "She is a friend of Lilian's," she said; "at least she invited her." "I thought she was rather a friend of Leycester's," said the old lady, dryly. Lady Wyndward looked at her, and a faint, a very faint color came into her aristocratic face. "You mean that he has noticed her?" she said. "Very much! I sat next to him at dinner. Was it wise to put him next to her? A child's head is quickly turned." "I did not arrange it so," replied Lady Wyndward. "I put his tablet next to Lenore's, as usual; but it got moved. I don't know who could have done it." "I do," said the old lady. "It was Leycester himself. I am sure of it by the way he looked." Lady Wyndward's white brow contracted for a moment. "It is like him. He will do or dare anything for an hour's amusement. I ought to be angry with him!" "Be as angry as you like, but don't let him know that you are," said the old lady, shrewdly. Lady Wyndward understood. "How beautiful Lenore looks to-night," she said, looking across the room where Lady Lenore stood fanning herself, her head thrown back, her eyes fixed on a picture. "Yes," assented the old countess. "If I were a man I should not rest until I had won her; if I were a man--but then men are so different to what we imagine them. They turn aside from a garden lily to pluck a wayside flower----" "But they come back to the lily," said Lady Wyndward, with a smile. "Yes," muttered the old countess, suavely; "after they have grown tired of the wild flower and thrown it aside." As she spoke the curtains were withdrawn and the gentlemen came sauntering in. No one rests long over the wine, nowadays; the earl scarcely drank a glass after the ladies left; he would fill his glass--fill two perhaps, but rarely did more than sip them. Lord Leycester would take a bumper of claret--the cellars were celebrated for the Chateau Margaux. To-night it seemed as if he had taken an additional one, for there was a deeper color on his face, and a brighter light in his eyes than usual; the light which used to shine there in his school-days, when there was some piece of wildness on, more mad than usual. Lord Guildford came in leaning lightly upon his arm, and he was talking to him in a low voice. "One of the most beautiful faces I have ever seen, Ley: not your regular cut-out-to-pattern kind of face, but fresh and--and--natural. The sort of face Venus might have had when she rose from the sea that fine morning----" "Hush!" said Lord Leycester, with a slight start, and he thought of the picture in his room, the picture of the Venus with the pale, fair face, across which he had drawn the defacing brush that night he had come home from his meeting with Stella. "Hush! they will hear you! Yes, she is beautiful." "Yes, beautiful! Take care, take care, Ley!" muttered Lord Charles. Leycester put his hand from him with a smile.