On the appointed evening Cecil was the first to enter the drawing-room; for the dowager had taken a siesta after luncheon, and was late at her toilette. Dressed in some transparent fabric of pale-blue, with a fluttering knot of ribbon here and there, and a turquoise cross upon her neck, Lady Cecil looked very elegant, very pretty, with that delicate loveliness which so rarely kindled into brilliancy, with that patrician calm which so seldom warmed into animation. She looked at the clock on the chimney-piece as she took a book from a cabinet where a few of her aunt's choicest volumes were ranged on alternate shelves with china teacups and quaint old Oriental monsters. "Only seven; and the people are asked for half-past, which always means eight," she thought, as she sank listlessly into a low chair near the open window. She opened her book and tried to read. It was a volume of Shelley; and the dreamy mysticism of the verse soothed her with its magic harmony. The shadows of her life had been fading gradually away from her within the last few months, but no sunshine had succeeded the darkness. She was too gentle and womanly to be cynical; but an indifference to every thing on earth--an indifference almost as profound as the dreary _ennui_ of Hamlet--had come down upon her. And yet she went to parties and danced quadrilles, and even waltzed on occasions. To dance and to make merry while the ruthless serpent gnaws at the heart is no new pastime. There is something pathetic in the simplicity with which Lucy Aikin tells us how the great Elizabeth went to a festival while her favourite--her Benjamin of favourites--the brilliant Essex, languished under the burden of her dread displeasure; while the imperious spirit of the Ruler was at war with the woman's doting heart, and the most terrible struggle of her life was going forward. There was dancing at my Lord Cobham's that night, and a masque performed by women, and one of these ladies wooed the Queen to dance. "Who are you?" asked the Sovereign. "My name is Affection," returned the masquer. "_Affection_," said the Queen, "_is false!_" And _yet_ she danced, remarks the historian with unconscious pathos. It was only ten minutes after seven, and Cecil was quite absorbed in the pages of Alastor, when the door was flung open with the stately swing peculiar to the accomplished dairyman who did duty as butler on the dowager's reception days, and the accomplished dairyman announced with perfect distinctness, "Mr. O'Boyneville."