"Mother," he said, "who is that beautiful girl?"
My lady looked at him with languid eyes.
"What beautiful girl, Lance? There are so many."
"An English girl, I am sure. She has a string of pearls in her hair. Who can she be?"
Still Lady Lanswell feigned ignorance. She looked on the wrong side of the room, and she affected not to understand where he meant, and when she could affect no longer, she said:
"Do you mean Lady Marion Erskine, the young lady near Princess Golza?"
"Yes, it must be Lady Erskine," he replied. "How beautiful she is, mother. She shines like a fair pearl with that background of dark tapestry. I heard some one say yesterday that she was in Rome. What a perfect face."
My lady looked at it coldly.
"Do you think so, Lance?" she said. "I thought that you gave the preference to dark beauties."
His heart went back for one moment to the beautiful, passionate face he had seen by the mill stream. The gorgeous salon, the beautiful women, the peerless face of Lady Marion, the exquisite music, all floated away from him, and he was once more by the mill-stream, with Leone's face before him. So strong, so vivid was the memory, that it was with difficulty he refrained from calling the name aloud.