There was a noise of carriages driving up to the house—the intimate friends who came first. The musicians below were beginning to tune their instruments, and the twanging of the strings touched an intenser chord of exhilaration. The long-ago dance at the bazaar—was Dosia to have another to-night to which that would be but as a shadow? For this was her ball—her ball, and the dance would be with Lawson as her lover. Her feet kept time to some fairy measure of her own. [Illustration: _Like a pictured marchioness of old_] Now she was robed in the white gown. It was like a white cloud enveloping her. Mrs. Leverich, rustling richly in pale green satin, came into the room and clasped a little thread of pearls around the slender white throat before she went down-stairs. Lois came also, gowned in trailing blue, beautiful, but pale and cold; there was a sick look around her mouth. One or two girls ran in for a peep at the débutante. And was not Dosia coming down? Mrs. Leverich sent up word that they were all waiting for her. In a moment—Dosia would come in a moment. If they would leave her, she would be down in a moment. The music had struck up now, and swung into the preparatory strains of Lohengrin. Dosia would come in a moment. As the bride feels who lingers for that little space alone in her chamber before facing the new joy, so felt Dosia. Her spirit cried out that this instant could never come again; she wished to feel it, to know it, forever. The mirrors reflected her with her hand on the door-knob, as she leaned half backward, her lashes touching her cheeks.... Then she opened the door and went down the hall to the stairs. Dosia’s beauty was of the kind that distinctly depends on the soul within, the most touching, yet the most transitory. Never in her life would she look again as she did to-night, with that lovely, childlike joy of anticipation; deeper happiness might be hers, but never happiness of the same kind. The men at the foot of the stairs saw it, and one shaded his eyes with his hand. The green-embowered stairway was a broad one which led to a broad landing; from thence it faced the wide doorway of the brilliantly lighted drawing-room across the hall. In there were grouped Mrs. Leverich, Lois, the rest of the receiving party, and the Misses Snow, standing near a table on which were piled the flowers sent to Dosia, their long ribbon streamers hanging down to the floor. Mr. Leverich was at the foot of the stairs, talking to Justin; beside him was George Sutton; beside him, again, was Billy Snow; at one side in the half-shadow of some palms was another man. Something in the turn of the shoulders was oddly familiar to Dosia—he moved suddenly, and for a second she stood with that figure in a dimly lighted tunnel. This was Bailey Girard. Hardly had this swift thought come to her than it was followed by another: Where was Lawson? “Here is our princess descending the stairs,” announced Mr. Sutton gallantly.