Perversity, inconsistency--but it was her nature, and she could not overcome it.

"If she had ever loved him, I might have forgiven her," she thought, "but she cared for him as little as she cares for Gideon Vetch to-day.

It was vanity then, and it is vanity now.

You cannot hurt her heart--only her pride--" Her father called from the stairs; and with a last swift glance at her image, she caught up a fan of ostrich plumes and a wrap of peacock-blue velvet.

She had never looked more brilliant in her life, not even on that June morning twenty-five years ago, when, coloured like a rose, she had been married to Kent Page beneath a bower of roses.