"I cannot say positively. I shall not know what my evening engagements are until dinner-time."
And then the colonel felt quite relieved. "He is going to call on Lady Amelie," he thought, "and wherever she goes this evening he will follow. I shall soon see him like other young men."
As for Basil himself, he simply lived in one longing for two o'clock. My lady was perfectly ready to receive him. She had arranged a little scene and smiled to herself as she thought how sure it was to succeed.
"He saw me all magnificence last evening; now I will play a different role."
She wore a plain dress of some white flowing material, with a knot of scarlet ribbons on her fair neck; her shining hair was drawn from her white brow and fell in luxuriant waves; in it she wore one rose half shrouded in green leaves, and never in all her gorgeous magnificence had Lady Amelie looked one-half as fair. She was seated in her own boudoir, where the white daphnes shone like stars in the rosy light. A picture that would have ravished the heart of any man that gazed upon it, and Lady Amelie knew that it was perfect, even down to the graceful attitude and half sad, half languid expression of her face.
It was not much after two when he came. Her reception of him was perfect—unstudied, graceful, natural; and he looking at her, thought her more beautiful than ever.
"You were reading," he said; "have I disturbed you?"
"No; Owen Meredith is a favorite poet of mine; there is something very unworldly and beautiful about his verses."
"That is why you like them—you are so unworldly yourself."
"Perhaps so, in one sense. I have just sufficient tinge of it about me to teach me that whatever are my thoughts and opinions, if they differ much from other people's, I must keep them to myself, unless, as is the case now, I meet a congenial soul."