She turned haughtily and looked over her shoulder, her smallest attitude always seeming to defy him, while Fox had an uneasy feeling that he was more acutely aware than usual to-night of the impossible relations between the two. Meanwhile, the entrance to the long room was already filling with the rapidly arriving throng which seemed, to the casual observer, a mass of satin and jewels and lavishly exposed necks and shoulders, with here and there a sprinkling of the black coats of the men. In spite of this influx, however, the young hostess stood a moment longer looking at them with a glance of malicious amusement in her drooping eyes, noting the whole effect of White’s large and rather florid personality as he received the first enthusiastic advance, responding genially to the murmur of congratulations. Then she turned and swept across the wide intervening space, her small head thrown proudly back, her whole grace of figure and dignity of pose--in direct contradiction to her former wild gayety and audacity--at once suggesting the _grande dame_ assuming her rightful and appropriate place. But Fox found it impossible to as easily free himself from the haunting sorrow of her beautiful haggard eyes. Sometimes she seemed to him to be as fragile, as exquisite and as perishable as a bit of delicately carved ivory. Yet he was forced to dismiss the analogy, for ivory, no matter how marvellously carved in imitation of a living creature, is inanimate, while she was the very personification of unrest; it seemed rather that some wild and beautiful sprite must have been enthralled into temporary captivity, and was wearing its way to liberty through the exquisite clay which had been fashioned into human shape for its mortal disguise, that the touch of inevitable sadness which sometimes came upon her was the moment when the sprite relapsed into the melancholia of prolonged captivity. III IT was a little past noon on Saturday when Rose Temple went to Allestree’s studio accompanied by Aunt Hannah Colfax, a faithful old negro woman who had been devoted to her from childhood and now performed the dual duties of maid and duenna with all the complacence and shrewdness of her age and color. Passing the quaint show-windows of Daddy Lerwick’s curiosity-shop on the first floor, in which were displayed--in amazing medley--pewter cups, old line engravings, camel’s-hair shawls and horse-pistols, they ascended the long narrow flight of stairs to the rooms above. On reaching them, Aunt Hannah promptly ensconced herself and her knitting under the window on the landing, while Rose pushed aside the portière and entered the studio, unconsciously carrying with her some of the crisp out-of-door atmosphere from whence she came and of which, in her buoyant and radiant youth, she seemed a visible and triumphant embodiment.