"The Earl of Marmouth sends his regards. He will be unable to join us." Tristram March held a coroneted note in his hands while he made this announcement to the company. There was a faint salvo of regrets, meant for the Violet's ears. Only Miss Milly Mills was heard remarking, sotto voce:

"I'm glad the old bear is chained for once."

"But the grizzly is grand in its den, dear," chided Dorothea Goodbody, a little louder.

"True. We do not fit everywhere," said the Violet, who had overheard them. "Imagine Thoreau in a salon."

"Or Talleyrand in the Walden woods," added Count L'Alienado.

More than one of the company had noted this as the third occasion on which his noble lordship avoided a meeting with the count. Was it that in the reserved Spaniard he had encountered a force which he could not overbear? Or was he jealous of the count's attention to the Violet? Twice at the Ryecroft's hop she had inadvertently answered the slender foreigner and turned her smooth, brown shoulder to the Englishman.

"Well," said Tristram, "the menagerie must perform without its lion."

"How flattering, brother!" cried Rosalie. Harry Arnold was leaning over her chair. "You compare us to wolves and panthers."

"Not unhappily," said the Violet. "Mine host is clever. He will put us all in an apologue like Aesop's. I am curious to see how I shall be transformed."

"The mood is wanting," cried Tristram, while the young ladies seconded the suggestion. "I am savage. I should affront you all with some furious satire."

"Imagine Tristram furious," said Harry.

"A smothered volcano. I have committed to-day the sin against the Holy Ghost. Guess what that is?"

"Success," said the Violet.

"Candor," the count.

"Bachelorhood," Miss Milly Mills.

"Punning," his sister Rosalie.

But Tristram shook his head drearily at each response.

"Well, then, tell us," cried a chorus of impatient voices.

"I have prostituted art to lucre—having disposed of my great design of Ajax's shield—for what purpose, do you think?"

All the guesses were wild again.

"For a bed-spread," said Tristram, and there was a chorus of laughter, amid which the circle broke up into little moving knots, all electrically united, however, so that the talk flew from one part of the room to another.

It was one of Tristram's soirees, which were the events of the season in Lenox. The flavor of art was substituted for that of artificiality, and usually some souvenir, bearing the touch of the host's own fanciful hand, was carried away by each of the guests. The coveted invitation for this night's affair announced "a purple tea," and the furnishings verified the description. Rich muslin shades over the chandeliers (Rosalie's work) purpled all the atmosphere of the parlors. Purple hangings here and there carried out the suggestion, but not too obtrusively, and each of the guests appeared with some purple garment.

Among the ladies these generally verged toward the wine-colored shades, for they were all too young to carry well the full warmth of the Tyrian. Thus the Violet's mantilla, Rosalie's cloud, Harry Arnold's sash, were all steeped to the same dye, now the crimson, now the blue element prevailing in the mixture. Count L'Alienado alone appeared to have evaded the rule until, raising his right hand to smell a rose, he scattered a pencil of purple light from an opalescent stone which none present were learned enough in lapidary science to name.

"Let's have tableau charades!" cried Miss Milly Mills, who flitted from person to person, from subject to subject, like a butterfly, and was accused of a partiality for spruce gum. The suggestion was taken up with approval, and nearly every one present acted out the first word that came to him on the spur of the moment.

Tristram gave what he called a definition of himself in lengthy pantomime which no one could fathom. So he was obliged to explain that meed—eye—ochre—tea, summed up "mediocrity," at which one and all protested. Most of the other attempts were quite as laborious. But when the Violet stepped forward and trilled an upper C, then buzzed like an insect and put her right foot forward, there was a unanimous cry of "Trilby!" and the flatness began to be taken out of the game.

Then the pleasures grew more miscellaneous and Count L'Alienado found himself for a time alone on the outer balcony with Mme. Violet. The sky was starlit above, the shadows lay deep in the garden bushes below, and the diamonds burned amid her braids. They talked of the Persian poets till the light voice of Tristram within interrupted them and a ripple of laughter from the purple interior reached their ears.

"Ah, this is not fair; that our wisest and wittiest should impoverish the company by their absence. Your places are waiting and the bell is tired of tinkling to you."

"We were lost among the stars," replied Count L'Alienado.

Opposite the count sat Harry Arnold; opposite the Violet, Rosalie. Waiters were serving refreshments, and a purple tea was poured into the wine-colored cups. On each table lay a souvenir containing verse or prose by Tristram March, with fantastic decorations in the border. Harry Arnold was just passing the souvenir of their table to Rosalie. It contained a caricature in profile of Tristram himself, and a brief "Autobiography," which Harry read aloud:

"Oh, I hate sarcasm," burst out Rosalie. "Why won't you be literal, commonplace, something positive, if it's only a woman-hater?"

"An abominable fault, brother Tristram," said Harry, sternly.

"Hideous!" cried the others, drowning poor Rosalie's homily in a flood of irony more heartless than Tristram's own.

Then Rosalie gave him up as incorrigible.

"I wonder if Count L'Alienado's jewel has not a legend attached to it?" said some one.

"It is an alamandine ruby from Siam," began the count.

"Oh, do go on," cried Miss Milly Mills from the rear, who had been listening over her shoulder. "Tell us the story. I'm sure it will be better than Cleverly's last book."

"Oh, if it isn't better than that——"

"But the setting was fresh," said Tristram, who was Cleverly's friend. "He rehangs his gallery well, even if the portraits are familiar."

"This talisman of mine has indeed a story attached to it," said Count L'Alienado at last, "but you may read hundreds better in any book of oriental tales. Its quality, however, is curious. You know that mesmerism has long been known in the east, and that many of the occult feats of the Hindoo magicians are ascribed to that power. It was an Arab caliph who first attributed to this stone the quality of securing immunity to its possessor from the magic trance. As a matter of fact, I have never been hypnotized while I wore it."

"A challenge, Harry," said Tristram.

"You possess the power?" asked the count.

"So I am told," laughed Harry.

"People go to sleep at his bidding," said Tristram. "He is the surest recipe I have seen for insomnia."

"Except the Rev. Dr. Fourthly," whispered Miss Milly Mills, but at this Dorothea Goodbody looked shocked.

"Shall I hypnotize you, Rosalie?" smiled Harry to his sweetheart.

But Rosalie shook her head with a little shudder.

"The count," said the Violet.

"The count! Hypnotize the count!" a chorus echoed.

"Very well," said the Spaniard; "a moment till I invoke the genii of the carbuncle. Now."

"Are you ready?" said Harry, laughing a little awkwardly. He made one or two cabalistic passes with his hands, looking straight into the eyes of the count. They were large burning eyes, the like of which Harry had never met before. Gazing into their depths, he seemed to feel a new spell. They were drawing him, drawing his soul away. Other objects disappeared. Rosalie, Tristram, the Violet—he clutched at them, but they were gone. The count himself grew shadowy. Only his eyes—fixed, haunting, luminous—remained, centering a vast drab vault, which was all that was left of the populous world and its occupants. What could Harry do but surrender his faculties and be absorbed like the rest?

"It is Harry who is hypnotized," cried Tristram. Rosalie fixed her gaze on her lover's face.

"Raise your right hand," said the count. Harry obeyed. His stare was glassy, his lower lip stupidly dropped.

"Do you know this glove?" asked the count, raising a lemon-colored kid.

"I do," came the answer, mechanical, monotonous.

"Try it on."

Harry drew the glove on his right hand, his eyes never leaving those of the count.

"Button it tightly," said the Spaniard. "Do you remember where you wore this glove last?"

"I do."

"Can you see the side door opening from the passageway?"

"I can."

"Do you recognize the youth who is entering?"

"I do."

"Is it Harry Arnold?"

"It is Harry Arnold."

"Does he listen cautiously?"

"He listens cautiously."

"Does he climb the stairs softly?"

"He climbs the stairs softly."

"Does he enter the study?"

The young man's face twitched and convulsed. His eyes started from their sockets. The foam rose to his lips as they worked.

"Harry!"

It was the agonized cry of Rosalie March, throwing herself upon her lover and turning defiantly at Count L'Alienado, whose fierce insistence had amazed the onlookers. The spell seemed to be broken, for Harry sunk from his chair, supported by Rosalie's arms.

"Some wine," cried Tristram, chafing Harry's forehead and gently striving to unclasp his sister's arms. But she clung to her sweetheart with love in her eyes.

Count L'Alienado approached the unconscious man, the crowd parting before him.

"Wake!" he said, "and forget!" Harry's eyes shut naturally and then opened. He drank the wine which Rosalie pressed to his lips. In a few minutes he was erect, eagerly questioning the company.

"Call it a faint," said Count L'Alienado, quietly. "It is better that he should not know."

"But what was it all about?" asked Miss Milly Mills, on tiptoe with curiosity.

"Only an experiment in clairvoyance," answered Count L'Alienado.