“If she is like everyone else,” he said, “I shall soon be disenchanted, but if she speaks as she looks, she will indeed be peerless among women.”

He longed for the evening.  He said nothing of her, but he talked so incessantly of the Duchess of Hexham, that the colonel understood exactly where his thoughts were, and smiled again most knowingly to himself.

He looked at his young kinsman in his faultless evening dress, and said to himself that there was not in all England a more noble or handsome man.

Lady Amelie called all the skill of the milliner to her aid; her dress was superb and effective—­gold flowers on a white ground—­a dress that irresistibly reminded one of sunbeams; it fell around her in statuesque folds that would have driven a sculptor to despair.  Her beautiful neck and white arms were bare.  She wore a diamond necklace of almost priceless value; her dark, shining hair was crowned with a circlet of the same royal stones; a diamond bracelet clasped one rounded arm.  As she moved the light shone on her dress and gleamed on her jewels, until one was dazed with her splendor.

Lady Amelie was very particular about her flowers.  On this evening, with her costly dress and magnificent jewels, she would have nothing but white daphnes.  Did she know that the sweet, subtle fragrance of a daphne reaches the senses long before the odor of other flowers touches them?  As she surveyed herself in the mirror, she felt devoutly satisfied.

“I shall be able to convert Basil Carruthers, Esq., to anything I like,” she said; “if he has resisted all the world, he will yield to me.”

So she drove off, resplendent, happy, animated, ready for the weaving of her spells.

Any good Christian, seeing her pass by with that triumphant smile on her lovely face, might have prayed their nearest and dearest should be kept from harm.

Lady Amelie never arrived very early at a ball.  She liked to make her entree when most of the other guests were assembled.  It was sweet to her to see how sorry and shy the ladies looked at her arrival, and how the faces of the men brightened.  The first thing, of course, when she arrived at Hexham House, was the archduke.  It was wonderful to watch the various phases of character that she could assume at will.  With the archduke, she was the brilliant woman of the world, witty, sarcastic, adorable.  He was enchanted with her; he declared that she combined all the charms of English and French women; he danced with her and would fain have lingered by her side, but that etiquette called him away.

Then Lady Amelie, already the belle of the ball, looked up, for Colonel Mostyn was standing before her, and by his side one of the handsomest and noblest young men she had ever seen.  He introduced Basil Carruthers to his fate.

She looked in his face with a smile, and drawing aside a fold of her sumptuous dress, made room for him to sit near her.