The dinner party was large and brilliant. Mr. Grahame, dressed as it seemed with studied care, presided. The company were unusually animated. The Honorable Lester Vane was present, though uninvited by Mrs. Grahame or her husband; but the Duke of St. Allborne had been honoured with a _carte-blanche_ for friends, who might add to the distinguished character of the assembly, and with a particular motive he had used his privilege to bring Vane with him. The latter accepted his offer, for he had his motives too, and despite the omission of his name from the list of the formally invited, he made his appearance. Looking Mrs. Grahame defiantly in the eyes, when she received him with stiff politeness, he deprecated in studied words--every one of which stung her to the quick--any apology for the oversight; as he expressed himself certain the unfortunate circumstances attendant upon the absence of her eldest daughter had naturally disturbed her usually calm and retentive memory. He looked sallow and savage; his large dark eyes glittered like a tiger’s upon the spring. There was a dull red mark upon his forehead, where Hugh Rivers dale’s blow had fallen, when he felled him to the earth, and he apparently took no pains to conceal it. He seemed to wear it as a badge of distinction, that might attract all eyes and many questions, enabling him thus to answer them in terms which would tear all Mrs. Grahame’s panoply of pride into shreds, and trample them scornfully under foot. How troubled she felt on seeing him!--how disqustedly she listened to his words!--with what sickening apprehension she gazed upon the cicatrised wound upon his forehead! She felt, as he passed into the room beyond, that her expectations of a proud triumph were likely to be turned into torturing anticipations of shame and degradation. Her pride now changed her from a Juno to an Ate. There was no telling into what extravagances, during this man’s presence, it might hurry her. As Lester Vane sauntered on, he caught sight of Evangeline, who looked pale and abstracted. He advanced towards her, and spoke to her with low musical tones. He bent his eyes upon her with the fascination of a serpent’s gaze, but she shrank from him in undisguised aversion--horrified aversion--there could certainly be no mistaking the expression; so decided was it in character, that he, in the fullness of his immeasurable conceit, actually looked over his shoulder, expecting there to see some hugely-moustached, be-whiskered object as the real cause of her disgust, but there was no one but himself to fasten upon, and he grated his teeth at the conviction. “Sweet Miss Evangeline,” he lisped, “I hail our _réunion_ with a gratification I am unable to express.” He tendered his hand, but she recoiled from it and him as though he were indeed a noxious reptile. Helen had spoken of him to her in hot and blistering words. She now feared and loathed him.