A FEW minutes before six o’clock that evening, Margaret, clad in a long black gown that swathed her up to her milk-white throat, came slowly down the broad staircase of General Gaston’s house and entered the empty drawing-room.
Finding herself alone, she moved across the warm, bright room to the table which stood under the chandelier, and taking up the evening paper, which had just been brought in, she began rather listlessly to run her eyes along its columns. Presently some particular item caught her attention, and so absorbed her that she was unconscious of approaching footsteps, until she caught sight of a gentleman who was just entering the room from the hall.
Lowering the paper, she waited for him to come forward, which he did with a certain perplexity of expression and a slight confusion of manner. Seeing these indications, the girl looked into his face with frank self-possession, and said gently:
“Miss Trevennon.”
As there was no immediate response, she presently added:
“You are Mr. Gaston?”
The sound of his own name recalled him, and he came up and greeted her with a perfect ease that instantly put to flight the moment’s confusion; not however, before a watchful eye, applied to a crack between the folding-doors of the library, had noted the fact of its existence. These doors were now suddenly thrown apart, and Mrs. Gaston, dressed in a gay and ornate costume, entered the room.
“I beg pardon of you both for not having been on hand to introduce you,” she said, with careless composure, as she took her brother-in-law’s hand and turned her cheek to receive his light kiss. “You have managed to dispense with my offices, I’m glad to see! How are you, Louis?—though it is the merest form to ask. He is one of the hopelessly healthy people, Margaret, who are the most exasperating class on earth to me. Anything in the Star, dear? Let me see.”
She took the paper from Miss Trevennon’s hand, and began carelessly looking it over. Suddenly her eye lighted.
“Here’s something that may interest you, Louis,” she said, handing him the paper, as she pointed with her heavily jewelled finger to a paragraph headed: