But let us go back a little way with our story.
[CHAPTER III.]
REJECTED ADDRESSES.
Through the spacious lengths of a suite of richly-furnished rooms, a woman was wandering, with that air of nervous restlessness which betokens a mind ill at ease. The light, stealing in soft tints through the curtains, fell upon many pictures and objects of taste and art, and all that lavish richness of plenishing to which wealthy Gothamites are prone—but upon nothing so beautiful as the mistress of them all, who now moved from place to place, lifting a costly toy here, pausing before a picture there, but really interested in neither.
"Virginia!"
Her cousin Philip had come in through the library so silently that she was unaware of his presence until he spoke, although it was waiting for him which had made her so uneasy.
"Well, Philip?"
She had started when he spoke her name, but recovered her haughty self-possession immediately.