The Duchess of Dawn is one of the most beautiful women in England. The eyes of the fashionable world were focussed on her and her guests, among whom were a minor European prince and a famous field-marshal who had not been on show in London for long, until there appeared from the crowded foyer, upon the arm of an old-young man of distinguished appearance and faultless tenue, a tall, slender girl, at whom, as she passed, every one turned to gaze, with undisguised admiration or envy, according to sex and temperament.
She was gowned to distraction, and by an artist in women's wear. Her beautiful bare arms and shoulders and bosom were free of superfluous ornament. Her pure, proud, sensitive features were faintly flushed,—as though, if that were conceivable, she was wearing evening dress for the first time, and found it trying,—but her curved crimson lips were slightly parted in a most bewitching smile, and, from under their drooping lashes, her radiant eyes looked a demure, amused, impersonal defiance at the frankly curious faces upturned toward her. The shaded lights made most enchanting lights and shadows among her hair, red-gold and heaped about her head in heavy coils, as she moved modestly through the thronged room toward a corner where, about a beautifully decorated table, four motionless waiters were standing guard over four empty chairs.
She sat down there, her back to the bulk of the company, and her escort took the seat opposite. A portly, prosperous-looking, elderly man, with something a little suspicious about one of his eyes, and a squat, queerly-shaped old fellow in semi-clerical garb and wearing smoked glasses, completed the party. Their waiters began to hover about them, and the fashionable world went on with its dinner.
"Who was that lovely girl?" the Duchess of Dawn demanded of her vis-à-vis, the veteran soldier, and he, reputed among women to have no heart at all, recalled himself with an evident start from the reverie into which he had fallen. He almost blushed, indeed, under the duchess's blandly discerning smile.
"I don't know, I'm sure, duchess," he returned, smiling also, in spite of himself, and beckoned to a servant behind him, whom he despatched on some errand.
"She's registered as Miss Harris, your lordship," the man announced in an undertone when he returned.
"Miss Harris!" echoed the prince, who was also a soldier. He had overheard. And, as he in turn caught the duchess's eyes, he lay back laughing, a little ruefully. But the man opposite him, the master of armies, was not amused.
"I'd like to know who and what those three fellows with Miss Harris may be," said he.
At their table in the corner, they seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves. The three men were toasting Sallie and each other with equal good-will. And even Sallie had dismissed from her mind the last of her lingering doubts as to the reality and endurance of her part in that most amazing new life, had put the past with all its horrors resolutely behind her, was too much interested in the entertaining present to trouble about the future at the moment.