“How are you, my dear Evelyn?  I’m glad to see you.  You’ll find some friends here.”  And Lady Ascott led her through shadowy drawing-rooms curtained with red silk hangings, filled with rich pictures, china vases, books, marble consol tables on which stood lamps and tall candles.  Owen came forward to meet her.

“I am so glad to meet you, Miss Innes!  You didn’t expect to see me?  I hope you’re not sorry.”

“No, Sir Owen, I’m not sorry; but this is a surprise, for Lady Ascott didn’t tell me.  Were you at the concert?”

“No, I couldn’t go; I was too ill.  It was a privation to remain at home thinking—­What did you sing?”

Evelyn looked at him shrewdly, believing only a little in his illness, and nearly convinced he had not gone to the concert because he wished to keep his presence a secret from her... fearing she would not come to Thornton Grange if she knew he were there.

“He missed a great deal; I told him so when I returned,” said Lady Ascott.

“But what can one do, Miss Innes, when one is ill?  The best music in the world—­even your voice when one is ill—.  Tell me what you sang.”

“Evelyn is going to sing at Glasgow; you will be able to go there with her.”

The servant announced another guest and Lady Ascott went forward to meet him.  Guest after guest, and all were greeted with little cries of fictitious intimacy; and each in turn related his or her journey, and the narratives were chequered with the names of other friends who had been staying in the houses they had just come from.  Evelyn listened, thinking of her poor people, contrasting their simplicities with the artificialities of the gang—­that is how she put it to herself—­which ran about from one house to another, visiting, calling itself Society, talking always, changing the conversation rapidly, never interested in any subject sufficiently to endure it for more than a minute and a half.  The life of these people seemed to Evelyn artificial as that of white mice, coming in by certain doors, going out by others, climbing poles, engaged in all kinds of little tricks; yet she was delighted to find herself among them all again, for her life had been dull and tedious since she left the convent; and this sudden change, taking her back to art and to her old friends, was very welcome; and the babble of all these people about her inveigled her out of her new self; and she liked to hear about so many people, their adventures, their ideas, misfortunes, precocious caprices.

The company had broken up into groups, and one little group, of which Evelyn was part, had withdrawn into a corner to discuss its own circle of friends; and all the while Evelyn’s face smiled, her eyes and her lips and her thoughts were atingle.  Nonsense!  Yes, it was nonsense!  But what delicious nonsense! and she waited for somebody to speak of Canary—­the “love machine,” as he was called.  No sooner had the thought come into her mind than