“It has been the most delightful evening I have ever passed,” said Mrs. Sylvester, as she threw aside her rich white mantle in her ample boudoir. “Sarah, two loops on that dolman tomorrow; do you hear? I thought my arms would freeze. Such an elegant gentleman as the Count de Frassac is! He absolutely went wild over you, Paula, but not understanding a word of English⁠—O there, if that horrid little wretch didn’t drop his spoon on my dress after all! He swore it never touched a thread of it, but just look at that spot, right in the middle of a pleating too. Paula, your opinion in regard to the lavendar was correct. I heard Mrs. Forsyth Jones whisper behind my back that lavendar always made blondes look fade. Of course I needed no further evidence to convince me that I had entirely succeeded in eclipsing her pale-faced daughter. Her daughter!” and the lazy gurgle echoed softly through the room, “As if every white-haired girl in the city considered herself entitled to be called a blonde!” She stopped to listen, examining herself in the glass near by. “I thought I heard Edward. It was very provoking in him to leave us in the cavalier manner in which he did. I was just going to introduce him to the count, not that he would have esteemed it much of an honor, Edward I mean, but when one has a good-looking husband⁠—Sarah, that curtain over there hangs crooked, pull it straight this instant. Did you try the oysters, Paula? They were perfection, I shall have to dismiss Lorenzo without ceremony and procure me a cook that can make an oyster fricassee. By the way did you notice⁠—” and so on and on for five minutes additional. Presently she burst forth with⁠—“I do believe I know what it is to be thoroughly satisfied at last. The consideration which one receives as the wife of the president of the Madison bank is certainly very gratifying. If I had known I would feel such a change in the social atmosphere, I would have advocated Edward’s dropping speculation long ago. Beauty and wealth may help one up the social ladder, but only a settled position such as he has now obtained, can carry you safely over the top. I feel at last as if we had reached the pinnacle of my ambition and had seen the ladder by which we mounted thrown down behind us. If I get my costume from Worth in time, I shall give a German next month.”

Paula from her stand at the door⁠—for some minutes she had been endeavoring to escape to her room⁠—surveyed her cousin in wonder. She had never seen her look as she did at that moment. Anyone who speaks from the heart, acquires a certain eloquence, and Ona for once was speaking from her heart. The unwonted emotion made her cheeks burn, and even her diamonds, ten thousand dollars worth as we have heard declared, were less brilliant than her eyes. Paula left her station on the doorsill and glided rapidly back to her side. “O Ona,” said she, “if you would only look like that when⁠—” she paused, what right had she to venture upon giving lessons to her benefactor.

“When what?” inquired the other, subsiding at once into her naturally languid manner. Then with a total forgetfulness of the momentary curiosity that had prompted the question, held out her head to the attendant Sarah, with a command to be relieved of her ornaments. Paula sighed and hastened to her room. She could not bring herself to mention her anxiety in regard to the still absent master of the house, to this lazily-smiling thoroughly satisfied woman.

But nonetheless did she herself sit up in the moonlight, listening with bended head for the sound of his step on the walk beneath. She could not sleep while he was absent; and yet the thoughts that disturbed her and kept her from her virgin pillow could not have been entirely for him, or why those wandering smiles that ever and anon passed flitting over her cheek, awakening the dimples that slumbered there, until she looked more like a dreamy picture of delight than a wakeful vision of apprehension. Not entirely for him⁠—yet when somewhere towards three o’clock, she heard the long delayed step upon the stoop, she started up with eager eyes and a nervous gesture that sufficiently betrayed how intense was her interest in her benefactor’s welfare and happiness. “If he goes to Ona’s room it is all right,” thought she; “but if he keeps on upstairs, I shall know that something is wrong and that he needs a comforter.”

He did not stop at Ona’s room; and struck with alarm, Paula opened wide her door and was about to step out to meet him, when she caught a sight of his face, and started back. Here was no anxiety, that she could palliate! The very fact that he did not observe her slight form standing before him in the brilliant moonlight, proved that a woman’s look or touch was not what he was in search of; and shrinking sensitively to one side, she sat down on the edge of her dainty bed, dropping her cheek into her hand with a weary troubled gesture from which all the delight had fled and only the apprehension remained. Suddenly she started alertly up; he was coming down again, this time with a gliding muffled tread. Sliding past her door, he descended to the floor below. She could hear the one weak stair in the heavy staircase creak, and⁠—What! he has passed Ona’s room, passed the bronze figure of Luxury on the platform beneath, is on his way to the front door, has opened it, shut it softly behind him and gone out again into the blank midnight streets. What did it mean? For a moment she thought she would run down and awaken Ona, but an involuntary remembrance of how those lazy eyes would open, stare peevishly and then shut again, stopped her on the threshold of her door; and sitting down again upon the side of her bed, she waited, this time with opened eyes eagerly staring before her, and quivering form that started at each and every sound that disturbed the silence of the great echoing house. At six o’clock she again rose; he had just reentered and this time he stopped at Ona’s room.