CHAPTER VIII.
Lady Amelie at Home.
The poets of old must have been thinking of a woman like Lady Amelie when they wrote of circes and sirens, and women whose beauty has proved fatal to men.

It is perhaps quite as well that they are very rare--the power of a beautiful woman is great.

If she be good, and use it for a good purpose; the world is the better for it.

If she be bad, and her beauty is simply used as a lure, the world is the worse for it.
Either for good or evil, the power of Lady Amelie was great, for a more royally beautiful woman had seldom been seen.

She was the very ideal of glowing, luxurious loveliness, and her beauty was perhaps the least of her charms.