Mr. Tremain had allowed George Newbold to take him away from Count Mellikoff without any great regret on his part. He acknowledged himself interested in the man and in his conversation, and at first as he listened had almost persuaded himself that his instinctive prejudice against him was ill-founded and narrow.

But as the Count continued in a perfectly passionless voice and with what seemed to Philip a grim satisfaction, his circumstantial revelations regarding Russia's power, and Russia's definition as to what constituted fatherly protection, he felt all his original doubts reawaken; and then he had caught that momentary, searching, comprehensive malevolent expression which crept over Vladimir's face, though but for a brief second, and this had strengthened him in his dislike and suspicion.

Therefore he was glad of any excuse to leave him and return to the more commonplace, if frivolous, topics of the ladies.

In the silence and security of his own room he had promised himself a somewhat more satisfactory interview with Mdlle. Lamien than had been his portion since the accident, and with this object in view had shaken himself out of his half-mesmeric condition, and deserted the hermitage of his cynical reflections.

But this was destined to be an evening of disappointments, beginning with Patricia's frigid reception of him, and culminating in the non-appearance of Mdlle. Lamien, either at dinner or afterwards in the drawing-room. He had watched in vain for the tall dark figure, with the falling laces half concealing the pale face and white hair, to come gliding in unnoticed, and take the accustomed place within the arched chimney-recess, the slender hands, clasped loosely together, resting on the black dress, the passionless repose of attitude marking a mind far away from the gay surroundings of the Folly.

He grew impatient at her absence, for Philip was of that temperament which, finding most things—men, women, and opportunity—come at his bidding, resented the smallest deviation from this rule, and chafed inwardly at so flagrant a dereliction to his will. He desired to see Mdlle. Lamien in Patricia's presence, and with the cool analysis of criticism, contrast her feature by feature, attribute by attribute, with that brilliant woman of the world. It had never entered into his reasoning that Mdlle. Lamien might frustrate his plans by the simple device of remaining invisible. He had perhaps imagined her presence compulsory, and since he had decided that she was to be the object of his evening's pleasure or amusement, he felt doubly defrauded by her absence.

Had Mdlle. Lamien desired to feed the flame of the something more than interest already lighted in Mr. Tremain's mind concerning her, she could not have chosen a surer method. He was piqued and chagrined at her evident indifference. It was many years since any advances on his part had been met by steady rebuff. He had sustained his character of conquering hero by the very rarity of his attentions, and it gave his sensibilities something of a moral shock to find himself distanced by this cold indifferent woman, whose very position made his interest in her the more anomalous.

It was ten years ago that Patricia had flouted and dismissed him. Was he to experience like treatment at Mdlle. Lamien's hands? For though Mr. Tremain had so far scarcely admitted the nature of the interest that Mimi's governess inspired in him, he was yet candid enough to give it a somewhat warmer title than mere curiosity in the study of a new character.

Patricia had distinctly repulsed him, though he had met her with the old love ready to reawaken at the first sign of desire on her part. Very well then, let Patricia see that he too was heart-whole and as indifferent to her as she to him. And then Mdlle. Lamien had failed to work up to his cue, and Philip felt his sharpest weapon was thus taken from him, while Patricia triumphed in her insolence and beauty.

The theatricals were to take place in the bijou gem of a theatre which George Newbold had had put up to please Esther, in the first year of their marriage. It was a perfect model in miniature of La Scala, at Milan, hung throughout with the softest shade of rose silk, a daring innovation of Esther's, which rather outvied the classic columns and severe arches, but which added a charming air of comfort and luxury, and was as Dick Darling said, "quite far and away the most fetching thing for the complexion."

The stage was fitted completely with all possible and impossible "properties," and opened at the back into the other end of the rose-house, the opposite door of which led into the drawing-room. It was indeed a royal playhouse, and acting upon its boards became a luxurious fine art.

When Mr. Tremain entered the auditorium, he found the first two rows of stalls half filled by the house guests; Patricia had betaken herself and her train of admirers to one of the boxes, where she sat radiant and lovely, the soft rose colouring of the hangings casting a delicious tint upon her fair face and upon the shimmering surface of her dress. Philip was at once conscious of her presence, but passed her by apparently unnoticed, and made his way to the front row, where sat Esther Newbold and Dick Darling, with an empty fauteuil beside the former.

Into this Mr. Tremain slipped carelessly, and with the familiarity of good-fellowship, lifted the great bouquet of roses and hyacinths that lay unheeded on Esther's lap. Dick Darling leant over and nodded her brown head at him, while Mrs. Newbold gave him one of her sweet smiles, but laid her fingers on her lips in token of silence, for Box and Cox held the stage, and Miss James was entering into the spirit of Mrs. Bouncer with a verve and sprightliness, seemingly incompatible with her usual irresponsive superciliousness.

The absurd farce played itself out amidst the chilling reproofs of Mr. Robinson, and the plaudits of the spectators, until at last the curtain dropped upon the final scene. Philip turned then to Mrs. Newbold, and restoring her flowers to her, said:

"A propos of nothing, Esther, whose exquisite taste is one supposed to praise in the arrangement of your posy?"

"Ah," said Mrs. Newbold, smiling again, and touching the great jacqueminots caressingly with her fingers, "I am very proud of my bouquet, and I will give you three guesses, Philip, at the donor's name."

"Yes," broke in Dick Darling, quickly, "and I'll bet you three to five you don't guess it!"

"Those are very certain odds, Miss Dick," replied Mr. Tremain, laughing, "considering that never in the course of my long and varied experience have I been known to elucidate the simplest rebus. Even 'when is a door not a door?' is beyond my mental powers; how then can I be expected to divine who is the latest slave to Mrs. Newbold's charms? I must say however, I consider George a very amiable young man."

"So do I," laughed Esther. "Now could a wife say more? But your three guesses, Mr. Tremain."

"Miss Darling must put up the stakes first," answered Philip, "I am not going to bring my powerful legal mind to bear on this problem without first seeing the stakes. Now then, Miss Dick, out with them."

"Oh, but I have positively nothing," cried Dick Darling, her face flushed and eager. "What could I possibly have worth Mr. Tremain's 'cheese'?"

"My dear Dick!" exclaimed Esther, "you really must get out a dictionary of your own terms; your expressions, I am sure, are nowhere to be found in Lindley Murray."

"Poor old duffer!" replied the incorrigible Dick, "I hope not indeed. I guess some of them would make his hair curl, even in the cold cold grave."

Philip laughed, and Esther tried to look scandalised, but failed utterly; and then Mr. Tremain said, bending slightly forward:

"You might put up that tantalising little note, Miss Dick, that is half stowed away in your laces. I am perfectly sure it contains 'some scandal of Queen Elizabeth,' which would amply repay me for my unwonted efforts, if I win it. Its very colour betrays it; whoever heard of a pink billet-doux that was not redolent of intrigue? The more bashful the colour, the more gigantic the scandal."

"What, this?" replied Dick, taking out a small square envelope, rose-tinted and crested. "Oh, no, this would not be worth your powder; it's only a note from Mdlle. Lamien, and doesn't contain a cent's worth of intrigue, Mr. Tremain."

"Then its looks belie it," said Philip, "for it fills me with apprehension. Let me look at it, Miss Dick, perhaps its tangible presence may allay my terrors."

But Dick only shook her head, and held the little note still further away.

"No, no," she cried, "it's not for you, Mr. Tremain, and I'm not going to give you even so much as a 'glim' at it." Saying this, she put it back in her dress, and smiled at Philip provokingly.

"I will put up this," she exclaimed, holding out her arm, on which a ruby and diamond butterfly sparkled in a bangle setting; "and I am sure it's simply angelic of me, for this is my one and only piece of bang-up jewellery; all real and no imitation, worth double the money. Now, Mr. Tremain, three guesses out of five; and oh, ye gods, protect my cherished bauble!"

She swung the pretty ornament between her finger and thumb, and the light from the wax-candles in the girandoles caught at it eagerly, as it shot forth rays tipped with rainbow gleams.

Mr. Tremain sat back with a mock air and sigh of fatigue, and the two women watched him interestedly; Esther with a little smile of amusement on her softly-tinted face, and Dick with a frown of anxiety knitting her forehead.

"Let me consider," said Philip, reflectively, putting the tips of his fingers together somewhat awkwardly on account of his sling, and contemplating them attentively, "only three random shots at three-score recognised admirers! Long odds in your favour, Miss Dick. Now had I but the language of flowers at my tongue's end, I might be able to make such conjunctions with the unwritten but supposable affinities, as to read at once the hidden meaning in the subtle juxtaposition of jacque roses and hyacinths. Question: Did the donor know any more about their meanings than I do?"

"I can supply you with posy lore, Mr. Tremain," broke in Mrs. Newbold, "if that will be of any assistance. Know then that the red red rose expresses love, the hyacinth sport or play."

"Ah, the one is contradictory of the other," replied Philip. "Your nameless admirer, Esther, could scarcely be guilty of so bold a play upon definitions as to make game of his love by his flowers. Rather let us suppose him ignorant of any deeper knowledge than their price."

"I think that an equally impertinent suggestion," answered Mrs. Newbold. "A man should never count the cost where a woman is concerned."

"Granted, my dear Esther; in theory you are absolutely right, in practice you are lamentably wrong. But I see wrath mantling on Miss Dick's brow, and scorn flashing from her eyes at our persiflage; let me appease her and make a desperate plunge into the depths of incertitude. And first of all, to be courteous and French, I throw away deliberately one chance in suggesting that it may have been M. le mari who sent the flowers? Ah, no, believe me, I did not need your silent denial, Esther, to be assured of my mistake; that would be far too commonplace and bourgeois a reading for our ethics of this nineteenth century. The lover sinks such attentions in the husband, and is better employed in sending flowers to some other man's wife, rather than to his own."

"How very cynical you can be, Philip," exclaimed Mrs. Newbold, turning her blue eyes full upon him. "I am sure George often gives me flowers; why, these very buds I am wearing are his gift," and she touched some half-open blossoms that formed her bouquet de corsage.

"That was very gallant of George," replied Mr. Tremain, gravely, "especially as he had the arduous task of gathering them from his own rosery, and the virtuous satisfaction of knowing that they cost him far more than the roses of your posy cost the other fellow. Well, let me try again. Was it Freddy Slade? I have noticed that innocent youth casting furtive glances in your direction, Mrs. Esther, too often of late. It is possible that his ardour may have over-stepped his prudence and his income, and your jacques been the result."

"Wrong again, Mr. Tremain," cried Dick Darling; "oh, I do hope, with all my soul, you may miss each time."

"Considering that I have but one chance more, that is rather ungenerous, Miss Dick. I should not have believed so rancorous a spirit dwelt within your breast. To wish to further humiliate a two-thirds vanquished foe!"

"But I don't want to lose my bangle, you see," said Dick, naÏvely, at which remark both Mr. Tremain and Esther laughed, and the former continued:

"Well, here goes my last and only try for your pretty bauble, Miss Dick. Was it Sir Piers Tracey? To be sure it is not quite in his line, and I never saw an Englishman yet who appreciated an American woman's love of flowers, still it might have been Sir Piers, and in that case George could not even try to appear jealous."

"Poor dear Sir Piers!" laughed Esther, "the idea of his sending any one flowers! He's old enough to be one's grandfather!"

"I don't know that that makes him ineligible," answered Mr. Tremain, "I dare say 'old Q.' and Beau Brummel showered roses upon the youthful Esthers of their decrepitude; it isn't age, my dear Mrs. Esther, that counts in such things, it's temperament."

"Well, in any case I am glad you have not won my bangle," cried Dick Darling, as she slipped it over her dimpled wrist. "I always make it a point to pay up my debts of honour on the spot, I can't bear a 'Welcher,' so you would have been obliged to take my ruby fly, had you been successful, Mr. Tremain, and that would have been death to me, simply death."

"With such an alternative, Miss Dick," replied Philip, with increased gravity, and bowing across Esther, "I am devoutly thankful to have lost, for to have been the indirect cause of your untimely decease, would have branded me for ever in my own eyes!"

Then Mrs. Newbold said time was up, and she must go; the Ladies' Battle would be called in five minutes, and she was wanted behind the scenes; was Mr. Tremain going through with his rÔle?

But Philip begged off on account of his still lame wrist which he wore bandaged and in a sling; it would be quite effort enough to act when the real representation took place, Mr. Robinson could read his lines and he would imbibe valuable hints from his superior method. Was Mdlle. Lamien to take the Countess d'Autreval's part?

"No," replied Esther, fingering her roses a trifle nervously, and looking at him from under her eyelids, "Miss Hildreth has elected to act her own rÔle at the rehearsal, consequently Mdlle. Lamien's services will not be required. Ah, Patricia has already left her box, I must go," she added, hastily; and with a hurried gesture she walked towards a side exit, her pale pink draperies sweeping after her, and making a little frou-frou with their silks and laces.

Mr. Tremain reseated himself, changing his fauteuil for the one Esther had vacated next to Miss Darling. He leant back negligently and turning his face towards that young lady said carelessly:

"Since we neither of us appear on the boards, Miss Dick, let us console one another off them. By the way, where is Miss James? I did not see her come into the theatre after her very capital bit of acting."

"Oh, I don't know," answered Miss Darling, with a shrug of her shoulders. "I suppose she is improving her mind somewhere, at the expense of some one. To speak frankly, Mr. Tremain, Rosalie and I are bad friends just now, and I give her as wide a berth as possible."

"Oh, indeed," answered Philip, rather bored, and not at all understanding that he was the cause of this bad friendship, since Dick, reading Rosalie's schemes and wishes, had denounced them hotly; and Miss James, with the remembrance of Perkins's slighting remarks still fresh, had replied with equal vigour; and so the breach widened between them day by day.

Dick sat silent for several moments, the colour coming and going in her cheeks; she was a very chivalrous little girl, and her whole heart had gone out in unreasoning admiration to Patricia, when first she saw her; her beauty, her brilliancy, her sparkling vivacity making an absolute captive of the maiden, who, as she looked at her, felt all her own shortcomings rise up and confront her in formidable array.

She had heard the story of Philip's and Patricia's engagement, and its unhappy termination, and she had secretly admired him, in her own mind, for a long time, and had felt Patricia's reception of him as a personal injury, which she longed to put right by a few judicious words. She felt sure they would be judicious because they would be honest. Now if he would only name Patricia, only ask some question, no matter how trivial, that she might introduce this one absorbing subject.

But Mr. Tremain, with that perverted obstinacy so often displayed, which consists in saying the wrong thing at the right moment, when he did speak, propounded a question so diametrically opposite to Dick Darling's thoughts that that young lady was actually taken aback, and stared at him blankly for a full second without answering. And yet Philip had only inquired if Miss Dick could say why Mdlle. Lamien had not appeared that evening? It was a simple enough question, but Miss Darling seemed incapable of replying to it, so he spoke again.

"My dear Miss Dick, what have I said? You look as though you had either not heard, or not understood me. Pray let me repeat myself. Can you tell me why Mdlle. Lamien has absented herself all this evening?"

Miss Darling by this time had come back from her vain imaginings, and answered him readily enough.

"Oh, I beg your pardon; I guess I must have been 'in Japan' when you first spoke. Why hasn't Mdlle. Lamien come down this evening? For a very simple reason: she has gone away."

"Gone away!" echoed Philip. "But I saw her late this afternoon in the corridor." He did not add, and heard her; since, if Esther Newbold spoke truly, it was she who had startled him by her sad, monotonous song, and her voice that had an echo of Patty's in its notes.

"Oh, no doubt," replied Miss Darling, "she only went away while we were at dinner; I heard the wheels of the dog-cart just as we had eaten our way up to the suprÊme de volaille."

"Is she to be gone long?" asked Philip, conscious and yet astonished at the feeling of loss this news created in him.

"I really don't know," replied Dick, looking a little surprised. "She left this note for me," taking out the pink envelope from its hiding-place and showing it to him. He bent forward eagerly to scan it as it lay on her outstretched palm, the superscription hidden, the reverse side lying uppermost. On this he saw impressed a tiny coronet and a twisted cypher, "A. de L."

"It only tells me about some fancy work she undertook for me," continued Dick, drawing back her hand with the note, "and thanks me rather over much for my 'unvarying kindness.' She might stow that," she concluded, with a grimace.

But Mr. Tremain had eyes and thoughts only for the little note, and its dainty, aristocratic heraldry.

"Is she a titled ÉmigrÉe in disguise?" he asked, pointing to the monogram and coronet; then, with an effort, as he became aware of Miss Darling's surprised looks, and speaking more lightly: "This grows exciting, Miss Dick; who knows?—we may have the elements of a three volume novel ready to our hands, yet lose them all by blundering. What do you know about Mdlle. Lamien?"

"Only what Esther has told us all, which you heard, I think. As to her being titled, if you think this indicates it," pointing to the embellishments on the pink note, "why you know, they go for nothing. It may be only a blind, or it may be that Mdlle. Lamien prefers to write on other people's note-paper. I don't think it's very conclusive evidence one way or the other."

And Miss Darling got up with almost an impatient air.

"I am going to change my seat," she said, "I want to go further back, where I can better see and admire Miss Hildreth. But before I go, Mr. Tremain, I will tell you who sent Esther the roses, it was Mdlle. Lamien; a sentimental and too extravagant outburst of gush on her part, wasn't it?"

Too surprised to reply, Mr. Tremain made way for Miss Darling, escorting her to a back row, where George Newbold received her with empressement, and Jack Howard with unqualified relief.

"Give you my word," he whispered in her ear, "I have been bored to death, Miss Dick; so glad to have you back again!"

But Miss Darling proved very poor company, and Jack Howard for once voted her tiresome.

"Stupid blind mole!" declared Dick to herself, as Philip made his bow and left her. "Can't he see how lovely Patricia has grown, that he must run after that pale Russian woman? Oh, what idiots men are!" and Miss Darling consoled herself by reducing poor Jack to the verge of despair by her sharp retorts and acrid replies.

Quite late in the evening, after the rehearsal was over, and the little theatre empty, Count Vladimir opened the double doors and stepped within Melpomene's deserted temple. The lights had not yet been put out, and the stage scenery stood unchanged from the last act; an air of late occupancy, and a memory of brilliant accessories, of fair women in their sheen of jewels and gleam of satins still lingered, to which the empty seats and deserted stage pointed the moral of all transitory glory.

Vladimir stood for a moment contemplating the scene, a fine smile curving his lips, the light of recent conquest lingering in his eyes.

"I am too late," he murmured; "the drama is played out seemingly, the actors fled. Ah, well, I can afford to wait."

Then he went forward a few steps, and as he did so his quick eye evidently detected something unexpected, for he made his way definitely towards the back row of stalls, stooping when he came to the last but one, and lifted from the carpet a folded square of paper. He held it up to the light; it was an envelope, pink in hue, and embellished on the smooth satin surface by a tiny coronet and a twisted cypher. It was Dick Darling's rose-coloured billet-doux.

Vladimir Mellikoff made no movement of surprise or triumph, but as he took out his black note-book and laid the envelope safely within its pages, the smile deepened on his lips and in his eyes. He turned and walked swiftly away, letting the double doors close noiselessly behind him.

The little theatre was once more deserted; the wax-lights flickered in the still air; the rose silk draperies stirred slightly as a passing breath of soft spring wind floated in from the rose house, bringing a wave of perfume from the golden blossoms over which it had lingered in its passage. The mimic comedy was played out, the actors had abandoned their rÔles; only real life and its human tragedy remained uncompleted, across which none but the Divine hand dare write the word finis.