Lady Spencer's ball is in full blast, and as Sir Harry Clive predicted, it is a "crush." But after all everyone seems to be enjoying it, even Mrs. Noble, who, in a conspicuous position, and surrounded by a small circle of diamond-admirers, deems herself an acknowledged belle, and gives herself pleasant and coquettish little airs, accordingly. "I have seen no one any prettier than I am," she confides to her mother, in a delighted whisper. "If that Lady Fairvale is here she cannot be a very great beauty. Doubtless she has been greatly overrated. I fancy that girl over there in the pink satin and opals must be she. You observe she has fair hair with dark eyes." "No; for that is Lady Alice Fordham, I am told," Mrs. Cleveland answers. "I do not think the beauty has arrived yet." "Staying late in order to create a sensation," Mrs. Noble sneers, then returning to her own admirers, forgets the distasteful subject for awhile in airing her own graces with the laudable intent of aggravating her husband, who has retired to a distant part of the room in supreme disgust. But suddenly in Mrs. Noble's vicinity an eager whisper runs from lip to lip, all eyes turn in one direction, a lady and gentleman advancing down the center of the room are the cynosure of all eyes--Lady Fairvale and Colonel Lockhart. Mrs. Noble catches her breath in unwilling admiration. For surely since Adam and Eve were paired in the Garden of Eden, no more beautiful pair had been created than these two! Colonel Lockhart, to humor a whim of his sister's, appeared in the splendid and becoming uniform of a colonel in the United States Army. His martial form and handsome face appeared princely in his becoming garb, and his fine, dark-blue eyes were sparkling with pride and happiness as they rested on the lovely girl who hung upon his arm with all the confidence of first, pure, innocent love. "She is as lovely as a dream," Mrs. Cleveland had said to her daughter, and Ivy, with a gasp of envy, is fain to acknowledge the truth. Tall, slenderly formed, with "Cheek of rose and brow of pearl, Shadowed by many a golden curl," with dark eyes radiating light beneath the drooping, ebon lashes, with neck and arms moulded like the gleaming white marble of a sculptor's masterpiece, and guiltless of all adornment; with that silvery robe sweeping about the stately form as if the mist of the sea had enveloped her, Lady Vera looks and moves "a queen," gracious, lovely, smiling, as if the shadow of a great despair were not brooding over that golden head. "Not a jewel, scarcely a flower, and yet more perfect than an artist's dream," Mrs. Cleveland whispers maliciously to her overbearing daughter. But Ivy forgets to be angry at the little thrust. She stares at the beautiful vision, pale to the very lips. "Leslie was right," she murmurs, like one dazed. "She frightens me, she is so like--so like that dead girl, Vera. Do you not see it, mamma?"