They did not go down until the carriages had begun to arrive, and then they descended the wide stairs dawdlingly, she leaning on him, with her two white-gloved hands clasped round his coat sleeve, and he bending his tall head towards her--talking still of their own affairs, and quite indifferent to the sensation they were about to make. When they entered the dim-coloured drawing-room, which was suffused with a low murmur of conversation, and by the mild radiance of many wax candles and coloured lamps, Elizabeth was made to understand by hostess and guests the exceptional position of Mrs. Yelverton of Yelverton, and wherein and how enormously it differed from that of Elizabeth King. But she was not so much taken up with her own state and circumstance as to forget those two who had been her charge for so many years. She searched for Nelly first. And Nelly was in the music-room, sitting at the piano, and looking dazzlingly fair under the gaslight in the white dress that she had worn at the club ball, and with dark red roses at her throat and in her yellow hair. She was playing Schubert's A Minor Sonata ravishingly--for the benefit of Mr. Smith, apparently, who sat, the recipient of smiles and whispers, beside her, rapt in ecstasies of appreciation; and she was taking not the slightest notice of Mr. Westmoreland, who, leaning over the other end of the piano on his folded arms, was openly sighing his soul into his lady's face. Then Elizabeth looked for Patty. And Patty she found on that settee within the alcove at the opposite end of the big room--also in her white ball dress, and also looking charming--engaged in what appeared to be an interesting and animated dialogue with the voluble Mrs. Aarons. The young matron sighed as she contrasted her own blessed lot with theirs--with Nelly's, ignorant of what love was, and with Patty's, knowing it, and yet having no comfort in the knowing. She did not know which to pity most. CHAPTER XLVI. PATTY CHOOSES HER CAREER.