A Woman Martyr

is unexpected change of manner. Her maid Julie was busy with a charming toilette de bal just arrived

lle," exclaimed the little Frenchwoma

hollow mockery. And as soon as she had changed her habit for a tea-gown, she locked herself in he

here was the faintest of faint hope left--that I might be with him some day--I could bear--everything! But to see

ped her throbbing head in both hands, and as

if he was the same again, I could not take advantage of it! Was

rk, until a sudden thought came

a friend of the Duchess," she told herself. "That is what it me

with a certain amount of patience.) When she stood before her long glass, with all the electric lights switched on, and saw herself in her gleaming white and shining pearls, tall, queenly, fair, with the glistening wreaths of golden hair crowning her small head, and her lustrous brown eyes alive with that peculiar, unfathomable expression which had gained her the

bear my life any more!" she told herself, despondently. "I shall end it all--no one wi

and gold everywhere was the rule to-night at Arran House, where the famous marble staircase had been brought from an old Venetian palazzo. This evening's decorations were carried out in gold-yellow; after the gardens and houses had been denuded of gold and white flowers to the disgust of the ducal gardeners, the London floris

she maintained her composure--he might yet come--and with her usual chilly indifference allowed her few privileged friends to inscribe their initials on her tiny tablet. New partners she declined, with the plea of fatigue

to her eyes and reading in them that which f

e before, when she had first longed for his love, and felt the throes of this overwhelming life-passion, they had danced together to that swaying, suggestive melody. He remembered it--remembered how to feel her sligh

said, as they halted, Joan white an

ty of the appealing, passionate abandonment to

drawing-rooms. The boudoir was empty--one or two couples only were seated in the adjacent anteroom, he saw at a glance they were well occu

er hands. "Joan!" he said--then, as he felt her passion, he simply drew

oments she forgot all--it was like heaven before its tim

ed, and she glanced about like a

to a chair, he fell at her knees, and embraced them. "I am the happiest man on earth! For your un

ny man's wife!" she said. "Why? Because I do not want

e were anguish and suffering in the lines about her mouth and

, he besought at least one interview, so that they should "understand each other." He had but just obtained a reluctant consent to a tête-à-tête on the morrow, wh

imed Joan, starting

ne with him by the Duke's eldest daughter. Still, with the promise of an elucidatory int

into the corridor. Which way led to the ballroom? Hesitating, glancing right and left,

ent, glittering stare of the black eyes which fixed themselves boldly upon her own; but because the countenanc

d to herself, unconsciously, involuntarily sh

d, she gave a strangled cry like th

ou publicly, here, to-night. But if you do not want me to call and send in my credentials at your uncle's house, you will me

e door, disappeared, she stood gazing after him as if hi