Suddenly I felt my heart stand still, the noise of voices ceasing the
same instant behind me. A lady was passing on the arm of a
foreign-looking gentleman, whom it did not require a second glance to
identify with the subject of the portrait in Mr. Blake's house. Older
by some few years than when her picture was painted, her beauty had
assumed a certain defiant expression that sufficiently betrayed the
fact that the years had not been so wholly happy as she had probably
anticipated when she jilted handsome Holman Blake for the old French
Count. At all events so I interpreted the look of latent scorn that
burned in her dark eyes, as she slowly turned her richly bejeweled
head towards the corner where that gentleman stood, and meeting his
eyes no doubt, bowed with a sudden loss of self-possession that not
all the haughty carriage of her noble form, held doubly erect for the
next few moments, could quite conceal or make forgotten.

"She still loves him," I inwardly commented and turned to see if the
surprise had awakened any expression on his uncommunicative
countenance.

Evidently not, for the tough old politician of the Fifteenth Ward was
laughing, at one of his own jokes probably, and looking up in the
face of Mr. Blake, whose back was turned to me, in a way that
entirely precluded all thought of any tragic expression in that
quarter. Somewhat disgusted, I withdrew and followed the lady.

I could not get very near. By this time the presence of a live
countess in the assembly had become known, and I found her surrounded
by a swarm of half-fledged youths. But I cared little for this; all I
wanted to know was whether Mr. Blake would approach her or not during
the evening. Tediously the moments passed; but a detective on duty,