The door opens, and Miss Blessington makes her appearance; looking, not vain or conscious, but calmly defiant of any one to make a better--a triumph of lace and tulle and flowers, and milk-white flesh, and grand, cold curves and contours. "Oh, how beautiful!" cries Essie, clasping her little hands, with the unaffected admiration of one handsome woman for another. "I know it is rude to make personal remarks; but is not she, Lady Gerard?" "It is a pretty dress," replies miladi, whose unwieldy bulk not even the cunningest of Parisian _couturières_ has been able to fashion into anything nearer than an approximation to any shape at all; "but I never think that Elise's taste is as good as Jane Clarke's used to be." Constance has walked to a pier-glass, and is examining with anxiety a bite that a gnat has been savage enough to inflict on her face, a little under the lower lip, and which has been disturbing her wonted composed serenity ever since 3 p.m., when the catastrophe took place. "Does it show much?" she asks, turning with a concerned, serious look to Esther. "Oh no! hardly at all." "I think I will put a little bit of sticking-plaster on it," she continues, gravely. "It will only look like a patch; and patches are always so becoming." "Let me go and get you a bit!" cries Essie, good-naturedly, running off. When she returns Sir Thomas is saying, fussily: "Now, why is not that boy dressed? Always the same! Always late! Never in time for anything!" "He is not coming, Sir Thomas; he has got a headache, and is gone to lie down--at least he said so," replies Constance, coldly, but casting a scrutinising glance at Esther (who is deftly, with a small pair of scissors, cutting out a little circle of sticking-plaster) as she speaks. "Stuff and nonsense!" cries "that boy's" papa, angrily--"a pack of lies! A fine Miss Molly you have made of your son, miladi! He'll be afraid of going out shooting next year for fear of getting his feet wet!" "Is that about the right size?" inquires Esther, timidly, raising a pair of guilty pink cheeks, and exhibiting the result of her labours on the point of the scissors. "Good God! miladi, do take that plaguy long tail of yours up! How the devil can I help treading on it?" These are the last sweet words of Sir Thomas, as he follows wife and ward into the carriage. They are gone, and Essie sits down in the large empty room to await the resurrection of her lover. The sort of shy half-fear which always assails her at his expected approach comes over her more strongly than ever. A distant door bangs faintly somewhere about the house; then another nearer. "He is coming!" she says to herself, and the quick blood rushes tingling to her fingers' ends.