"Give me a chance, Dorothy. If you will not dance come out on the veranda and look at the ocean. It is glorious to-night. I will not keep you long. The lights here trouble my eyes; besides, I am most anxious to ask you--" "No, no," she vehemently objected, very much as if frightened. "I can not leave the drawing-room--do not ask me--seek some other partner--do, to-night." "You wish it?" "Very much." She was panting, eager. I felt my heart sink and dreaded lest I should betray my feelings. "You do not honor me then with your regard," I retorted, bowing ceremoniously as I became assured that we were attracting more attention than I considered desirable. She was silent. Her hand went again to her hair. I changed my tone. Quietly, but with an emphasis which moved her in spite of herself, I whispered: "If I leave you now will you tell me to-morrow why you are so peremptory with me to-night?" With an eagerness which was anything but encouraging, she answered with suddenly recovered gaiety: "Yes, yes, after all this excitement is over." And, slipping her hand into that of a friend who was passing, she was soon in the whirl again and dancing--she who had just assured me that she did not mean to dance again that night. III A SCREAM IN THE NIGHT I turned and, hardly conscious of my actions, stumbled from the room. A bevy of young people at once surrounded me. What I said to them I hardly know. I only remember that it was several minutes before I found myself again alone and making for the little room into which Beaton had vanished a half-hour before. It was the one given up to card-playing. Did I expect to find him seated at one of the tables? Possibly; at all events I approached the doorway and was about to enter when a heavy step shook the threshold before me and I found myself confronted by the advancing figure of an elderly lady whose portrait it is now time for me to draw. It is no pleasurable task, but one I can not escape. Imagine, then, a broad, weighty woman of not much height, with a face whose features were usually forgotten in the impression made by her great cheeks and falling jowls. If the small eyes rested on you, you found them sinister and strange, but if they were turned elsewhere, you asked in what lay the power of the face, and sought in vain amid its long wrinkles and indeterminate lines for the secret of that spiritual and bodily repulsion which the least look into this impassive countenance was calculated to produce. She was a woman of immense means, and an oppressive consciousness of this spoke in every movement of her heavy frame, which always seemed to take up three times as much space as rightfully belonged to any human creature. Add to this that she was seldom seen without a display of diamonds which made her broad bust look like the bejeweled breast of some Eastern idol, and some idea may be formed of this redoubtable woman whom I have hitherto confined myself to speaking of as _the gorgon_.