Cecil found herself wondering that Hector Gordon should be there, listening to the foolish talk of a lighthearted coquette, when it was only nine or ten months since the current of his life had been overshadowed by sorrow and death. His manner was graver and more subdued than of old, it is true; but still he was there, amidst that scene of foolish gaiety, while his young wife's grave was not yet a year old. The band-master waved his baton while Cecil was thinking this, and the band began the overture to the _Bronze Horse_. It was in the midst of this lively music that Hector Gordon turned and met the eyes of the woman he had once asked to be his wife. They saluted each other as ceremoniously as if they faintly remembered having met once before at a ball, or a morning concert, or somewhere. Cecil had been paler than usual from the early part of that evening, and on first seeing the Scotchman she had observed that the old warm glow of colour had vanished from his bearded face. If she fancied for a moment that he grew paler as he looked at her, it was only a foolish fancy, which she dismissed in the next instant. "How do you do, Lady Cecil O'Boyneville?" he said, with just the faintest emphasis on the surname. "How do you do, Major Gordon?" Cecil would have been terribly perplexed had she been called upon to say any thing more; but amidst the brazen prancings of the _Bronze Horse_ this was about as much as could be said. The band-master flourished his baton in a kind of frenzy as he urged his men to the climax; the cornets and trombones blew themselves into convulsions, and with a brilliant volley of chords, short and sharp as file-firing, the crimson velvet curtains swept apart, revealing a bijou chamber which Vestris herself might have envied. It was a boudoir hung with white satin, and furnished with chairs and sofas and tiny fragile tables of white wood, that were miracles of the upholsterer's art. On tables and cabinets there were vases of Sèvres biscuit filled with white exotics. Every thing in the gem-like chamber was white. It was the virginal nest of a Parisian _aristocrate_ of the old _régime;_ such a nest as one might find nowadays in the _Champs Elysées_ or the _Rue Taibout_, occupied by a different tenant. The comedy was called _On accorde à qui persévère_, and was one of those airy fabrics which can only be constructed by the light hand of a Gallic workman.