He had just reached the bottom of the stairs when a figure, radiant as Venus herself, alighted from a brougham at the door, and swept over the threshold, in all the pride and glory of the most brilliant and latest Parisian toilet. It was the woman who had been sitting in the balcony in Porchester Square the previous evening, when the weary pedestrian had stopped Captain Desfrayne, and implored his pity. Almost at the moment when she alighted, she was met by a young man, who was about to enter the mansion. This young man was Lady Quaintree’s only son--a fair, slender, rather foppish young fellow, with a pale, interesting face, and a pretty, graceful figure. The attention of the resplendent creature in pink satin and white lace was turned smilingly on this young man, who stepped eagerly forward, and offered her his arm; otherwise she must have seen Captain Desfrayne, who gazed at her as people are supposed to stare at specters. A few muttered, half-broken words escaped Paul Desfrayne’s lips, and he looked hurriedly about, with the air of an animal at bay. Then, swiftly turning, as the two gay, laughing and flirting apparitions came up the hall, he threw aside a crimson velvet portière, and plunged recklessly into a room close at hand. It was a moderate-sized sitting-room, flooded with a soft, pure light, and deliciously cool in contrast to the heated salons above. Paul Desfrayne was about to congratulate himself on the retired nook into which he had managed to tumble; but almost at the instant when he entered, he heard a silvery, musical voice, sounding so as to evidence that the person who owned it was rapidly approaching from a conservatory opening on the room--the voice of his mother, speaking in animated conversation. It was impossible to retreat, though he would gladly have avoided even his idolized mother at that moment. Nay, she was just then the last being he desired to see. She would naturally be surprised to meet him here, for until this evening he had scarcely known anything of Lord or Lady Quaintree. The clustered lights above the doorway, half-hidden as they were by climbing exotics trained in prodigal profusion about slender columns, shed their glowing beams upon an animated face and superbly handsome figure, as Mrs. Desfrayne appeared, arrayed, as was her wont, with faultless taste. Her companion was Lord Quaintree, the famous judge--a tall, noble old Englishman. “I am free to confess, my lord,” she was saying, “that I do not at all approve of the presence of these singing-women at reunions such as this of to-night. They are very well in their proper places, these people.” It would be impossible to give any idea of the insolent disdain with which these words were uttered. “But they ought not to be allowed to mix with----”