“I don’t know—certainly—of course—” returned Mrs. Sylvester with some incoherence. “Do you think red looks as well with this black as the lavender would do?” she rambled on in her lightest tone, pulling out a box of feathers. Paula gave her a little wistful glance of disappointment and decided in favor of the lavender. “I am bound to look well to-night if I never do so again,” said Ona. They were all going to a public reception at which a foreign lord was expected to be present. “How fortunate I am to have a perfect little hairdresser in my own family, without being obliged to send for some gossipy, fussy old Madame with her stories of how such and such a one looked when dressed for the Grand Duke’s ball, or how Mrs. So and So always gave her more than her price because she rolled up puffs so exquisitely.” And stopping to aid the deft girl in substituting the lavender feather for the red rose in her hair—she forgot to ask any more questions. * * * * * “Ona,” remarked her husband, coming into the room on his way down to dinner—Mrs. Sylvester never dined when she was going to any grand entertainment; it made her look flushed she said—“I am not in the habit of troubling you about your family matters, but have you heard from your father of late?” Mrs. Sylvester turned from her jewel-casket and calmly surveyed his face. It was fixed and formal, the face he turned to his servants and sometimes—to his wife. “No,” said she, with a light little gesture as though she were speaking of the most trivial matter. “In one respect at least, papa is like an angel, his visits are few and far between.” Mr. Sylvester’s eye-brows drew heavily together. For a man with a smile of strange sweetness, he could sometimes look very forbidding. “_When_ was he here last?” he inquired in a tone more commanding than he knew. She did not appear to resent it. “Let me see,” mused she. “When was it I lost my diamond ear-ring? O I remember, it was on the eve of New Year’s day a year ago; I recollect because I had to wear pearls with my garnet brocade,” she pettishly sighed. “And papa came the next week, after you had given me the money for a new pair. I have reason to remember _that_, for not a dollar did he leave me.” “Ona!” exclaimed her husband, shrinking back in uncontrollable surprise, while his eyes flashed inquiringly to her ears in which two noble diamonds were brilliantly shining. “O,” she cried, just raising one snowy hand to those sparkling ornaments, while a faint blush, the existence of which he had sometimes doubted, swept over her careless face. “I was enabled to procure them in time; but for a whole two months I had to go without diamonds.” She did not say that she had bartered her wedding jewels to make up the sum she needed, but he may have understood that without being told. “And that is the last time you have seen him?” He held her eyes with his, she could not look away. “The very last, sir; strange to say.”