It happened that Mr. Grahame had guests that day. There were two very high, very proud, very rich members of the aristocracy, a kinsman of his wife’s, from the north, infinitely more proud than rich, and the young Duke of St. Allborne, who had recently exhibited symptoms of being entangled in the meshes which Margaret Grahame had, with cold calculation and no mean skill, contrived to wind about him. Helen, perhaps, would have shrunk from encountering this assemblage, had she known that her relatives were not dining _en famille_. It had not occurred to her to put the question, and she proceeded to the dining-room, expecting only to meet her parents, her brother, and her sisters. The conversation at the table, when she entered the dining-room, was as animated and lively as might be expected. Mr. Grahame was endeavouring to forget that he stood upon a volcano, which roared, and seethed, and bubbled beneath his feet. He was engaged discussing a political question with his two aristocratic friends. Mrs. Grahame was occupied with her kinsman, and Margaret exclusively with the Duke, alternately flattering him and deferring with the profoundest attention and deference to his observations, so that he felt quite sure that if she did not possess the beauty of many he had seen, she had wonderful discrimination. Malcolm was silently drinking to Lotte, pledging her mentally every time the bottle came round, and Evangeline, still and retiring as ever, was thinking about her sister Helen, and perhaps the young pleasant-faced gentleman, who had lost a sister, too. The door flew open widely. “Miss Grahame!” shouted the butler, with extended orbs and inflated nostrils. Helen, full dressed, pale as marble, but stately as a queen, walked up the room to an unoccupied seat upon the right hand of her mother. She made a slight inclination of her head to those present, and then seated herself, with a self-possession, considering the events which had happened, quite startling. “Miss Grahame!” was involuntarily repeated by every one present, and naturally all eyes rested upon her. A strange and, as it were, a solemn stillness followed her appearance. Her face was so white, so transparent and colourless; her eyes shone with such unearthly brilliancy; her hair lay so black and glossy upon her brow, contrasting powerfully with her snowy temples; she sat so erect, and gazed around her with so haughty and defiant a mien--that if not deemed a phantom by those who were strangers to her, they, at least, suspected that she had risen from a bed of sickness; and, in a fit of temporary derangement, had decked herself out in ball attire and presented herself, thus suddenly and unexpectedly, before them. The eyes of the guests next sought the face of Mr. Grahame, to learn what effect this apparition had upon him. . His face had become as white as that of his own child.