Daphne would have fallen to the floor if some one had not caught her in his arms. She lay cradled within the artist's embrace, her fair face resting on his breast, and his arms wound round her slender figure. Brief as was this embrace, it was nevertheless of sufficient duration to make me hate him--for a time, at least. Tenderly he laid the figure of my cousin on an ottoman. The ladies of the assembly crowded round, and applied such remedies as were at hand to restore her from her swoon. Angelo stood by the couch with folded arms, gazing at the prostrate form with a wistful look. "Beautiful! What a model for an artist!" he murmured. He must have had a strange taste in the selection of his subjects if he could have found pleasure in painting Daphne as she was just then. Her face had parted with its bright, fresh beauty, and had assumed the sharp and careworn look of age. Her bridal dress seemed almost to have lost its sheen: the white flowers in her hair to have become emblems of death. Presently the artist raised his eyes with a light as of triumph in them; they met mine, and for a few seconds we stood looking at each other; and then I learned that some one besides myself had been wishing that George would never return. At length Daphne opened her eyes and spoke: "It can't be true, it can't be true! George would never treat me like this. Oh, what shall I do?" and at last she broke down in a passion of tears, terrible to witness, and we men, conscious of our impotence in face of such overwhelming grief, stole from the room and left her to the women. Much as the guests would have liked to relieve my uncle of the embarrassment of their presence in these unforeseen circumstances of sorrow, they were prevented from doing so by the storm, which, having raged for many hours, rendered locomotion out of doors extremely difficult. My uncle made no excuses for his withdrawal from the company, and as soon as I could do so, I too followed him to his library, where I found him sitting with Angelo Vasari. "I suppose," the latter was saying, "that Captain Willard is not very well known in Paris or London?" A curious question this! What could it possibly matter to the artist whether George was or was not well known in Paris or London? Yet here he was putting the question with a similar show of eagerness as when asking me to study the twelve facial sketches. "I doubt," replied my uncle, "whether there are six people in Europe who know him--know him intimately, that is. As a young man he graduated at Upsala----" "In Sweden, you know," I interjected, for the enlightenment of the artist, who seemed to resent this attempt of mine to teach him geography. "And then," continued my uncle, "after a brief interval in England he sailed for India, where he has been ever since till the last two months." "And it was during that brief interval in England, I suppose," said Angelo, "that he became engaged to Miss Leslie?" "Just so."