Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain, such as the Gaols used to wear; the “Dying Gladiator” has it.  Her dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but the silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round, but slender rather than large, in keeping with her lithe round figure.  On her wrists she wore bracelets:  one was a circlet of enamelled scales; the other looked as if it might have been Cleopatra’s asp, with its body turned to gold and its, eyes to emeralds.

Her father—­for Dudley Venner was her father—­looked like a man of culture and breeding, but melancholy and with a distracted air, as one whose life had met some fatal cross or blight.  He saluted hardly anybody except his entertainers and the Doctor.  One would have said, to look at him, that he was not at the party by choice; and it was natural enough to think, with Susy Pettingill, that it must have been a freak of the dark girl’s which brought him there, for he had the air of a shy and sad-hearted recluse.

It was hard to say what could have brought Elsie Venner to the party.  Hardly anybody seemed to know her, and she seemed not at all disposed to make acquaintances.  Here and there was one of the older girls from the Institute, but she appeared to have nothing in common with them.  Even in the schoolroom, it may be remembered, she sat apart by her own choice, and now in the midst of the crowd she made a circle of isolation round herself.  Drawing her arm out of her father’s, she stood against the wall, and looked, with a strange, cold glitter in her eyes, at the crowd which moved and babbled before her.

The old Doctor came up to her by and by.

“Well, Elsie, I am quite surprised to find you here.  Do tell me how you happened to do such a good-natured thing as to let us see you at such a great party.”

“It’s been dull at the mansion-house,” she said, “and I wanted to get out of it.  It’s too lonely there,—­there’s nobody to hate since Dick’s gone.”

The Doctor laughed good-naturedly, as if this were an amusing bit of pleasantry,—­but he lifted his head and dropped his eyes a little, so as to see her through his spectacles.  She narrowed her lids slightly, as one often sees a sleepy cat narrow hers,—­somewhat as you may remember our famous Margaret used to, if you remember her at all,—­so that her eyes looked very small, but bright as the diamonds on her breast.  The old Doctor felt very oddly as she looked at him; be did not like the feeling, so he dropped his head and lifted his eyes and looked at her over his spectacles again.

“And how have you all been at the mansion house?” said the Doctor.

“Oh, well enough.  But Dick’s gone, and there’s nobody left but Dudley and I and the people.  I’m tired of it.  What kills anybody quickest, Doctor?” Then, in a whisper, “I ran away again the other day, you know.”