With a puzzled face she looked from him to Miss L’Estrange.

“You surprise me,” she said, quickly.  “I should have thought Romeo a character above all others to please you.”

Philippa has listened with a smile—­nothing had escaped her.  Looking up, she said, with a bright laugh: 

“I cannot compliment you on being a good judge of character, Miss Byrton.  It may be perhaps that you have not known Lord Arleigh well enough.  But he is the last person in the world to make a good Romeo. I know but one character in Shakespeare’s plays that would suit him.”

“And that?” interrogated Lord Arleigh.

“That,” replied Philippa, “is Petruchio;” and amidst a general laugh the conversation ended.

Miss Byrton was the first to take her departure.  Lord Arleigh lingered for some little time—­he was still unconvinced.  The wretched, half-formed suspicion that there was something hidden beneath Philippa’s manner still pursued him; he wanted to see if she was the same to him.  There was indeed no perceptible difference.  She leaned back in her favorite chair with an air of relief, as though she were tired of visitors.

“Now let us talk about the fete, Norman,” she said.  “You are the only one I care to talk with about my neighbors.”

So for half an hour they discussed the fete, the dresses, the music, the different flirtations—­Philippa in her usual bright, laughing, half-sarcastic fashion, with the keen sense of humor that was peculiar to her.  Lord Arleigh could not see that there was any effort in her conversation; he could not see the least shadow on her brightness; and at heart he was thankful.

When he was going away, she asked him about riding on the morrow just as usual.  He could not see the slightest difference in her manner.  That unpleasant little conversation on the lake might never have taken place for all the remembrance of it that seemed to trouble her.  Then, when he rose to take his leave, she held out her hand with a bright, amused expression.

“Good-night, Petruchio,” she said.  “I am pleased at the name I have found for you.”

“I am not so sure that it is appropriate,” he rejoined.  “I think on the whole I would rather love a Juliet than tame a shrew.”

“It may be in the book of fate that you will do both,” she observed; and they parted, laughing at the idea.

To the last the light shone in her eyes, and the scarlet lips were wreathed in smiles; but, when the door had closed behind him and she was alone, the haggard, terrible change that fell over the young face was painful to see.  The light, the youth, the beauty seemed all to fade from it; it grew white, stricken, as though the pain of death were upon her.  She clasped her hands as one who had lost all hope.

“How am I to bear it?” she cried.  “What am I to do?” She looked round her with the bewildered air of one who had lost her way—­with the dazed appearance of one from beneath whose feet the plank of safety had been withdrawn.  It was all over—­life was all over; the love that had been her life was suddenly taken from her.  Hope was dead—­the past in which she had lived was all a plank—­he did not love her.