She leaned back and smiled at her face in the glass, and thought no more of the maid's pale and anxious one. Had she been not so entirely heartless, had she even only affected a little interest and expressed some sympathy, the unhappy girl might have broken down and confessed her share in the meditated crime; but Lady Luce was incapable of pretending sympathy with a servant. In her eyes servants were of quite a different order of creation to that of her own class; hewers of wood and drawers of water, of no account beyond that which they gained from their value to their masters or mistresses. To consider the feelings of the servants who waited upon her would have seemed absurd to Lady Luce, almost, indeed, a kind of bad form. The dinner bell had rung before she was dressed, and she hurried down to find herself the last to arrive in the drawing-room. She sought Drake's face as she entered. It still wore the expression of suppressed excitement which she had noticed when he came in from his walk, and he smiled with a kind of reluctant admiration as he noticed the magnificent dress, and the way in which it set off her beauty. At dinner his altered mood was so marked that several persons who were near him noticed it. He, who had been so quiet and grave, almost stern in his manner and speech, to-night talked much and rapidly, and laughed freely. The flush on his face deepened, and his eyes flashed so brightly that Wolfer, who was sitting near him, could not help noticing how often Drake permitted the butler to fill his glass, and wondered whether anything had happened, and whether he were drinking too much. But Drake's gayety was infectious enough, and the dinner was a much livelier one than any that had preceded it. Lady Luce was, perhaps, the most quiet and least talkative; but she sat and listened to Drake's stories and badinage, with a smile in her eyes and her lips slightly apart. In a few hours he would speak the word which would make her the future Countess of Angleford! The ladies lingered at the table rather longer than usual, for Drake's stories had suggested others to the other men, and his high spirits had awakened those of the persons near him. But Lady Angleford rose at last, and the ladies filed off to the drawing-room. The men closed up their ranks, and Drake sent the wine round briskly. There was no dance to cut short the pleasant "after-the-ladies-have-gone" time; and they sat long over their wine, so that it was nearly ten o'clock when Drake, with his hand on the decanter near him, said: "No more, anybody? Sure? Turfleigh, you will, surely!" But the old man knew that he had had enough. He, too, was excited, and under a strain, and he rose rather unsteadily and shook his head. "No, thanks. Er--er--I fancy we've rather punished that claret of yours to-night, my dear boy." "It's a sad heart that never rejoices!" Drake retorted, with a laugh which sounded so reckless that Wolfer glanced at him with surprise.